Pub - The Poetics of Colonization From City To Text in A

The Poetics of Colonization
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The Poetics of
Colonization
From City to Text in Archaic Greece
CAROL DOUGHERTY
New York Oxford

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1993
Oxford University Press
Oxford New York Toror o

Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi
Kuala Lumpur Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo
Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town
Melbourne Auckland Madrid
and associated companies in
Berlin Ibadan
Copyright © 1993 by Carol Dougherty
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.

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Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dougherty, Carol, 1958-
The poetics of colonization : from city to text in archaic Greece
/ Carol Dougherty,
p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-508399-7
1. Greek literature—History and criticism. 2. Cities and towns—
Greece—Historiography. 3. City and town life in literature.
4. Greece—Colonies—Historiography. 5. Literature and history-
Greece. 6. Imperialism in literature. 7. Colonies in literature.
8. Narration (Rhetoric) 9. Rhetoric, Ancient. I. Title.
PA3009.D68 1993 880.9'321732—dc20 92-41090
246897531
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Acknowledgments
I would first like to thank W. R. Connor, Richard P. Martin, and Froma I. Zeitlin
whose intellectual influence and encouragement have extended far beyond their for-
mal role as dissertation advisors. Their work consistently reinvents the boundaries
of our field and will always influence the kinds of questions I ask.
In its various stages, this book has benefitted a great deal from many different
people. Thanks to my Wellesley colleagues: Katherine Geffcken, Rachel Jacoff,
Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Miranda Marvin, Alison Mclntyre, Guy Rogers, Ray Starr, and
Susan Taylor. Special thanks go to Mary Lefkowitz, who may not always agree
with me but who listens nonetheless, to Martin Brody and Randall Colaizzi for their
astute stylistic (and other) advice, and to Tom Cushman for allowing me to appro-
priate his ancestor for my introduction. In addition, Sarah Harrell was a great help
in preparing an earlier version of the manuscript. I am also indebted to my col-
leagues in the greater Boston area: Carla Antonaccio, Deborah Boedeker, Leonard
Muellner, Ian Rutherford, Andrew Szegedy-Maszak, and Emily Vermeule. I would
like to add a special thanks to Gregory Nagy for his good-natured support and last-
minute proofreading.
Wellesley College's generous early leave policy provided the much needed time
and peace of mind to finish this project, and I would like to thank the Classics
Department at UC Berkeley for creating such a welcome workplace for my leave
year, particularly my good friend and collaborator, Leslie Kurke. I am grateful to
have had the opportunity to talk with many other people in the Bay Area as well,
both new and old acquaintances, whose insight and encouragement made this a
much better book: Karen Bassi, Mark Griffith, Tom Habinek, Lisa Maurizio,
Marsh McCall, Andrea Wilson Nightingale, and Susan Stephens.
Finally, I would like to thank Cambridge University Press, Classical Antiquity,
and Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies for allowing me to reprint previously
published material. Research for this book was also supported by a National
Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend in 1990. Pindar references are to
the edition of B. Snell, revised by H. Maehler (Leipzig 1980); Bacchylides refer-
ences are to the edition of H. Maehler (Leiden 1982). Abbreviations for ancient
works follow the Oxford Classical Dictionary (2nd ed.); a list of further abbrevia-
tions follows.
Wellesley, Massachusetts C.D.

February 1993
Contents
Introduction: The Poetics of Colonization, 3
Part I. Narratives and Metaphors: Translating the City into Text

1. Laying the Foundations: Narrative and Cult, 15
2. Murderous Founders, 31
3. Impossible Sites, 45
4. The Lay of the Land, 61
Part II. Texts in Context: Staging the City

5. Hieron and Aetna, 83
6. Pythian 5: Colonial Founders and Athletic Victors, 103
7. Olympian 1 and Bacchylides Ode 11: Murder, Victory, and Colonization, 120
8. Pythian 9: Appropriating the Native, 136
Conclusion: Interpreting the Metaphors, 157

Appendix, 165
Bibliography, 189
Index of Passages, 201
Subject Index, 205
Abbreviations
AJP American Journal of Philology

Annales (ESC) Annales (Economic, Societes, Civilisations)
ARV2 J. D. Beazley, Attic Red-figure Vase-painters, 2nd ed.
(Oxford 1963)
ASNP Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Classe di
Lettere e Filosofia
BCH Bulletin de Correspondance Hellenique
BICS Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies
BSA Annual of the British School of Athens
CA Classical Antiquity
CAH Cambridge Ancient History
CJ Classical Journal
CP Classical Philology
CQ Classical Quarterly
CR Classical Review
CRDAC Centra ricerche e documentazione sull' antichita classica.
Atti. Rome.
CSCA California Studies in Classical Antiquity
CW Classical World
DK Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, ed. H. Diels and W. Kranz
FGrH Die Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker, ed. F. Jacoby
FHG Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, 5 vols., ed. C. Mttller
GRBS Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies
HSCP Harvard Studies in Classical Philology
HTR Harvard Theological Review
ICS Illinois Classical Studies
IG Inscriptiones Graecae
JHS Journal of Hellenic Studies
L-P Lobel and Page 1955
x Abbreviations
LSJ Greek-English Lexicon, ed. H. G. Liddell, R. Scott, and H. S.

Jones
MusHel Museum Helveticum
MW Merkelbach and West 1967
PP La Parola del Passato
PMG Poetae Melici Graeci, ed. D. L. Page
QUCC Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica
RE Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Enzyklopadie der klassischen
Altertumswissenschaft
REA Revue des Etudes Anciennes
REG Revue des Etudes Grecques
RhMus Rheinisches Museum
S-M Pindar and Bacchylides, ed. Snell-Maehler
T Tarditi 1968
TAP A Transactions of the American Philological Association
TrGF Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. R. Kannicht, S.
Radt, and B.Snell (Gottingen 1971—)
W Iambi et Elegi Graeci, 2 vols., ed. M. L. West
WS Wiener Studien
YCS Yale Classical Studies
The Poetics of Colonization
Introduction: The Poetics of Colonization
The beginning is the greatest thing in everything, but especially in the establish-
ment and founding of a city.
(Plut. De Fort. Rom. 8.321 AB)
Early in the year 1621 the subject of emigration to America received considerable
public attention in England. Robert Cushman, a devoted friend and agent of the Pil-
grim cause, anxious to persuade others to "go and do likewise," published an essay
on the subject of settling America. He first poses the natural question, "What right
have I to go live in the heathens' country?" and responds:
And first, seeing we daily pray for the conversion of the heathens, we must con-
sider whether there be not some ordinary means and course for us to take to con-
vert them, or whether prayer for them be only referred to God's extraordinary
work from heaven. Now it seemeth unto me that we ought also to endeavor and
use the means to convert them; and the means cannot be used unless we go to
them, or they come to us. To us they cannot come, our land is full; to them we
may go, their land is empty.
This then is a sufficient reason to prove our going thither to live lawful. Their
land is spacious and void, and there are few, and do but run over the grass, as do
also the foxes and wild beasts. They are not industrious, neither have art, science,
skill or faculty to use either the land or the commodoties of it; but all spoils, rots,
and is marred for want of manuring, gathering, ordering, &c. As the ancient patri-
archs, therefore, removed from straiter places into more roomy, where the land lay
idle and waste, and none used it, though there dwelt inhabitants by them, as Gen.
xiii. 6, 11, 12, and xxiv. 21, and xli. 20, so is it lawful now to take a land which
none useth, and make use of it. ("Reasons and Considerations Touching the Law-
fulness of Removing out of England into the Parts of America"1)
As the Europeans explored and colonized the New World, certain issues and anxi-
eties emerged in their writings; chief among them, as we can see from Cushman,
was the need to explain European occupation of foreign land. One theme that dom-
inates early American writings represents colonization as a moral imperative from
God: the duty of Europeans to bring Christianity to heathens. A second argument
which Cushman uses as well highlights the emptiness of the New World in sharp
3
4 Introduction: The Poetics of Colonization
contrast to the straitened and cramped circumstances of England. Implicit is the

assumption that there is plenty of room in America for anyone who wishes to go
and that European possession of this land is merely a sensible attempt to redistribute
the population. Later in this same essay Cushman refers to America as "a vast and
empty chaos," and the mention of chaos prompts a third rationale for foreign settle-
ment. The New World, before European settlement, was a place of overabundant,
underutilized wilderness, crying out for the civilizing order of the Old World ("All
spoils, rots and is marred for want of manuring, gathering, ordering, &c."). The
European settlement of America, then, and the subsequent displacement of the
native populations becomes both the work of God and a transfer of order and civi-
lization to a land previously spacious and void, superabundant with unused natural
growth.
These (and other) discursive strategies used to describe the European presence
on American soil are common to many colonial traditions. In the subsequent chap-
ters I will explore the legends and literature not of colonial America, but of the
archaic Greek colonization movement. From the eighth to the sixth centuries
B.C.E., the Greeks established an astounding number of new cities on foreign soil as
far east as the Black Sea and as far west as the coast of Spain. In this massive colo-
nial enterprise, portrayed by the Greeks in later literature, we recognize many of the
themes and narrative conventions prominent in European accounts of American set-
tlement. The Greeks, too, attributed their colonial impulse to a divine source, to
Delphic Apollo. Europeans such as Cushman quote chapter and verse of the Bible
to justify the "lawfulness of removing out of England into the parts of America";
the Greeks include within their foundation accounts the very Delphic oracles that
prompted their colonial endeavors. Present in the Greek traditions as well is the
tendency to describe the colonial site as a golden-age "garden of Eden"—like Cush-
man's land "spacious and void," an unoccupied territorial expanse waiting for the
Greek settlers to bring order and civilization.2
Tales of archaic Greek city foundations continued to be told and retold long
after the colonies themselves were settled; they were tightly woven into the larger
fabric of Greek cultural memory. In spite of the obvious affinities that the Greek
material has with other accounts of settling new worlds, this substantial collection
of colonial tales has never been read (neither by classicists nor by those who work
on modern texts) within the larger critical framework of colonial discourse. Greek
stories about colonizing Sicily or the Black Sea in the seventh century B.C.E. are no
more transparent, no less culturally constructed than nineteenth century British tales
of empire in India or Africa; they are every bit as much about power, language, and
cultural appropriation. With this in mind, I will explore how the ancient Greeks
constructed their memory of founding new cities on foreign shores; this book is
concerned with the representations—not the realia—of archaic colonization.
But first, some issues of methodology. Whom do I mean when I ask how "the
Greeks" remembered colonization? Given the nature and scarcity of our sources, it
is difficult to be sure what individual Greeks thought about colonization (or any-
thing else) both within the archaic period and in later times. How did the Corinthi-
ans record the settlement of Syracuse, and how did their version differ from the
tales told by those who actually participated in the colony? How do the colonial
Introduction: The Poetics of Colonization 5
legends of the archaic period compare with those of the classical period and later?
While it is important to acknowledge such differences whenever possible, much
may be gained as well from exploring how the Greeks, as a community with shared
beliefs, reconstructed colonization. Thus I will look at the colonial tale as a cultural
product, a topos that extends from the Homeric poems to Plutarch's Moralia and
beyond. As will emerge in the chapters to follow, the narrative pattern, metaphors,
and language of colonial discourse are informed by cultural phenomena such as
purification practices, the Delphic oracle, marriage ideology, and Panhellenic com-
petition, all of which belong to Greece as a whole and whose influence transcend
individual time periodization.
Insofar as the Greek colonial narrative concerns events in the past, some of Hay-
den White's observations about historical narratives will be helpful in establishing a
methodology. White suggests that narrative discourse in general uses metaphysical
concepts, religious beliefs, or story forms to make sense of the strange, the enig-
matic, or the mysterious—in other words "to familiarize the unfamiliar."3 Since in
White's view, historical narratives are not so very different from poetic or literary
texts in their use of narrative strategies and figurative language, much of his
approach will help us in our discussion of Greek colonial tales to set aside the often
problematic distinctions between what modern scholarship identifies as myth, leg-
end, folklore, and history.4
Greek narratives about the past combine discourses that we today keep separate.
Sometimes a foundation tale seems to fall clearly in the mythic realm, as, for exam-
ple, when Apollo spies the nymph Cyrene, carries her across the sea, and estab-
lishes her as foundress of the city named for her in Libya.5 Other colonization
accounts, however, sound more historical to us. Thucydides tells us that Archias,
one of the Bacchiads, led the founding expedition from Corinth to the colony of
Syracuse.6 Many more accounts stem from what we would call the world of legend.
Greeks from Pylos were shipwrecked on their way home from Troy and founded
the colony of Metapontum.7 Although they describe the past, colonization tales
must also respond to the needs of the present; the significance of the narrative
depends less on an accurate reflection of facts than on internal coherence and con-
tinued cultural value. As a result, historical, literary, mythical, and legendary mate-
rial are combined as needed to represent and legitimate action.8 White suggests that
this is not just an ancient Greek phenomenon: "we experience the 'fictionalization'
of history as an 'explanation' for the same reason that we experience great fiction as
an illumination of a world that we inhabit along with the author. In both we recog-
nize the forms by which consciousness both constitutes and colonizes the world it
seeks to inhabit comfortably."9
White identifies the literary codes of classical historiography in terms of
emplotment, argument, ideology, and metaphor, and I am particularly interested in
what he has to say about emplotment and metaphor.10 He notes that events them-
selves cannot form stories; they can only provide their constituent elements. "The
events are made into a story by the suppression or subordination of certain of them
and the highlighting of others, by characterization, motific repetition, variation of
tone and point of view, alternative descriptive strategies, and the like—in short, all
of the techniques that we would normally expect to find in the emplotment of a
novel or a play."11 Thus, as we will see, the Greeks represent colonization as a

familiar story—crisis, Delphic consultation, and resolution—and this "emplotment"
of the colonial narrative is one of the ways the Greeks (as a culture) authorize their
common past.
White also emphasizes the "tropological element of discourse." Both this
attention to figurative language in general and in particular his appreciation of how
metaphor "familiarizes the unfamiliar" will also help us understand what some
would call the fictional element of colonial tales. For White, historical narratives
are a complex of symbols; they exploit the metaphorical relationships between real
events and the conventional structures of our fictions in order to endow the past
with meaning.12 Much of my approach to Greek colonial discourse will focus on
the kinds of cultural metaphors that the Greeks use to describe and to understand
colonization.
White's analysis of historical narrative, then, provides a framework for reading
the colonial narrative as a kind of discourse that organizes its story in familiar and
culturally significant ways. But since we are not working with a single historian's
view of Greek colonization but rather with the larger cultural memory of that phe-
nomenon, the work of cultural anthropology will also be helpful. In trying to under-
stand archaic Greece, much of what we do is to reconstruct meaning from the sur-
viving art, literature, and other traces of ritual practice for which anthropologists
like Mary Douglas, Clifford Geertz, and Victor Turner have set out useful theoreti-
cal principles.13 Geertz, for example, explains that, as an anthroplogist, he
approaches another culture not by imagining himself as its member but by "search-
ing out and analyzing the symbolic forms—words, images, institutions, behav-
iors—in terms of which, in each place, people actually represented themselves to
themselves and to one another."14 Similarly, by analyzing the kinds of symbols and
metaphors used by the Greeks to represent colonization, I attempt here to under-
stand this aspect of archaic Greek culture in a novel way.
We must think about the nature of Greek colonial tales within the larger cultural
context that produced them since the archaic colonization movement was both a
response to and responsible for a radical break in the Greek way of life.15 Tradi-
tional cultures, like archaic Greece, must develop procedures for accommodating
abrupt change that can negotiate a place for the new without irretrievably altering
the old. Here the work of another anthropologist, Marshall Sahlins, will also be
helpful in supplementing Geertz's highly stylized and static interpretations of cul-
tural systems, which often fail to take sufficiently into account elements of political
or historical change.16 Sahlins' studies of the interaction between the Polynesians
and the British in the eighteenth century provide us with a model for understanding
historical change within a cultural continuum.17 His approach suggests a context in
which to read the Greeks' use of familiar narrative conventions and tropes to con-
struct their memory of the new phenomenon of colonization. He shows, for exam-
ple, that the Polynesians incorporated the historical arrival of Captain Cook into
their native mythical and cultural system as the annual return of Lono, the Hawaiian
fertility god. For them Cook functions as a "historical metaphor of a mythical real-
ity."18 Sahlins argues that not only do a culture's received categories inform the
way it interprets new historical events, but these events alter the cultural structure as
well—the arrival of the British causes the Hawaiians to reorganize their economic
system. This restructuring, however, is achieved within the framework of the same
system and is broadcast through the established cultural media, Polynesian myth
and legend, as more of the same. We will see this same process of reciprocal nego-
tiation at work as the archaic Greeks struggle to make sense of the changes that col-
onization brings to their view of the world.19
Thus, anthropology provides a framework for analyzing cultural metaphors and
the various ways in which a culture represents itself to itself. But since Greek colo-
nial tales are often situated in larger literary contexts, literary theory will also con-
tribute to our understanding of the colonial narrative in situ. My interest in what I
have called the poetics of the archaic colonization movement (in fact the title of this
book) owes something to recent schools of literary theory that reject traditional
assumptions about the relationship between history and literature, between literature
and society.20 I propose to approach Greek colonial tales not only as the product of
social, political, religious, and literary manipulations but as an active force in ongo-
ing cultural negotiations as well.
The readings of colonial tales that follow recognize the problematic distinctions
not only between 'literature' and 'history' (as Hayden White has noted) but also
between 'text' and 'context.'21 We must be aware of the limits inherent in con-
structing a narrative of colonization, of describing new territory, landscapes, and
peoples while restricted by one's own language, vocabulary, and categories of expe-
rience, as Wayne Franklin notes in describing how the language and literary expec-
tations of the Old World influenced accounts of the New World:
Particularly in colonial settings, where the replication of old forms is a controlling

impetus to new action, language develops a priority of its own. As the means by
which colonial agents make their reports to the home government (and do so with
a clear understanding of what they are expected to say), language comes to exert a
subtle influence on how life in the colony is conceptualized, even perceived or
carried on. The range of admissible statement predetermines both the manner of
reportage and the conduct of those affairs which will be subject to review.22
In his history of the Australian colonial experience, Robert Hughes remarks that in
much the same way, early representations of Australian territory were conditioned
by English landscape conventions. He explains this tendency as "habit resorting to
familiar European stereotypes to deal with the unfamiliar appearance of things Aus-
tralian; thus it took at least two decades for colonial watercolorists to get the gum
trees right, so that they did not look like English oaks or elms."23
As we proceed to look at the Greek material, it will be helpful to keep correc-
tives such as this in mind. Since Greek colonial legends, like all narratives, are not
clear, untroubled reflections of some historical truth but rather are literary represen-
tations of that truth, they stand in a complicated relationship to the events they
relate. Like the Europeans, the Greeks had to confront a "new world" and address
the problems, fears, and anxieties inherent in settling territory overseas, but unlike
them, the Greeks have left us none of the private letters, journals, or eyewitness
accounts with which to balance the grander literary narratives. Yet it is still possi-
ble (and important) to explore the relationship between historical event and narra-
tive account, to ask how each informs the other.
The discussion of how and why the Greeks, as a culture, continued to tell colo-
nization stories must begin from some consensus about what defined a colonial nar-
rative. In spite of the fluidity between what we identify as myth, history, and leg-
end, there was for the Greeks a clear sense of different kinds of narratives about the
past, and we need to identify the peculiarly Greek pattern and motifs of the colo-
nization narrative. For this reason, in the first chapter, I have collected as many
sources for archaic colonization as possible, trying to avoid traditional assumptions
about text as foreground and history as background; history as truth and myth as
fiction; older sources as more valuable than later ones. In drawing upon poetic
texts, anecdotes, historical narratives, religious treatises, oracular pronouncements,
and archeological data alike, I have created a composite typology of the coloniza-
tion narrative in order to discover how the Greeks "emplotted" their memory of
archaic colonization. While the individual instances of the colonial narrative (which
I call colonial tales or legends) vary from colony to colony, the basic narrative pat-
tern that emerges can be summarized as follows: crisis, Delphic consultation, colo-
nial foundation, resolution. City founders received cult honors after death, and
quite likely the annual celebrations of that cult provided a public occasion for the
continued retelling of the colonial narrative. For this reason the first chapter also
outlines the details of cult practice, which formed an important part of the colonial
experience.
Each of the first three stages of the colonial narrative is in turn linked to cultural
metaphors (or conceptual models), which help the Greeks represent the unfamiliar
phenomenon of colonization in terms of familiar symbols or institutions. The first
two metaphors focus on the problems of leaving home and cluster around Apollo
and his oracle at Delphi. Within the colonial narrative, a crisis in the mother city
motivates the need to colonize; murder and the purification that it demands are
emblematic of overseas settlement as a solution to civic crisis—whether it be
drought, overpopulation, or civil discord. Thus, in the second chapter, I show that
Delphic Apollo's civic role as a purifying deity, especially in cases of homicide,
provides the Greeks with a metaphor for leaving home to found a new city: found-
ing a colony is described as the purification for murder. This particular model thus
addresses the anxieties inherent in expelling part of a civic population for the good
of those who remain. In addition, purification as a metaphor for colonization helps
motivate a variant of the colonial narrative in which a murder prompts the consulta-
tion of Delphi, and the murderer is told by Apollo to found a colony in order to be
ritually cleansed of that murder—a variant which acknowledges the violent nature
of a colonial expedition and expiates that violence in the movement from crisis to
resolution which is plotted as the structure of the narrative.
The next stage in the colonial narrative, the Delphic consultation, links up with
another metaphor for conceptualizing colonization. In Chapter 3, I show that the
enigmatic language characteristic of the Delphic oracle offers an appropriate lin-
guistic environment for representations of founding a new city, and colonization is
thus described as the solution to a riddle. Punning riddles, in particular, make it
possible to construct a colonial tale that describes a foreign landscape with a Greek
vocabulary. Bilingual wordplay hellenizes local cults and geography and thus
addresses the problems of contact with native populations in foreign territory.
Again the threat of violence is displaced, this time by substituting for Greek mili-
tary prowess the intellectual superiority required to interpret Delphic oracles.
The foundation of a new city—the solution to the civic crisis—marks the end of
the colonial narrative. At this point, the inevitable confrontation between Greeks
and native populations entails a third cultural metaphor—marriage. Unlike the pre-
vious two metaphors, this one focuses on the moment of arrival, on the question of
the terms upon which the Greeks will occupy this new land. Thus, in Chapter 4,1
argue that the civilizing ideology of marriage comes to represent the relationship
between the Greek settlers and the native inhabitants. Again, a variant of the colo-
nial narrative relates to this cultural metaphor, and foundation accounts that
describe the union of Greek male gods with local female nymphs represent the new
city in terms that celebrate the dominance of Greek culture over local nature.
Within the tale of settlement the power relationship between men and women which
Greek marriage implies is then used to negotiate the terms of interaction between
Greek colonists and local populations. Both marriage and colonization entail vio-
lence; both institutions use that violence to transform wildness and lack of cultiva-
tion into a state of fruitful civilization.
Thus, the colonial narrative (and all its variants), cult practice, and the three cul-
tural metaphors of purification, riddling, and marriage combine to form what I call
colonial discourse. Once we have begun to map out the parameters of this dis-
course, the next step is to investigate the practice or context for telling colonial
tales. Chapter 5 concerns the founding of Aetna by Hieron, tyrant of Syracuse, and
the literature that celebrates that foundation in order to discuss colonial discourse as
it is embedded in literary contexts. Both Aeschylus' Aetnaeae and Pindar's Pythian
1 adopt the representational strategies of archaic colonial discourse to celebrate the
fifth-century foundation of Aetna. In addition, I suggest that Greek drama and
epinician poetry are appropriate performance contexts for enacting colonial ideol-
ogy—both provide an occasion for civic celebration. Drama allows a city to act
out its origins; it provides a context for restaging the colonial moment, a public per-
formance which, in the case of the Aetnaeae, phrases the city foundation in terms
of a bilingual pun, a Greek translation of a local cult. Colonial tales link the power
of the individual founder to his city's greater glory, and in this respect, they are very
much at home in the epinician genre as well. Epinician poetry provides the ritual
context for transferring a victor's talismanic power to his city, and a similar
conflation of the founder's status and that of his city occurs within the colonial tale
as well. Thus we see another cultural metaphor at work—a colonial founder func-
tions as an appropriate model of praise for the athletic victor. The institution of
Panhellenic competition also helps the Greeks conceptualize colonization.
The final three chapters then show how Pindar incorporates colonial tales within
the larger context of the epinician ode. In Pythian 5 the similarities between the
careers of the athletic victor and the city founder make such a comparison a natural
one; Pindar models his description and praise of the victor closely on the deeds of
the city founder. The next chapter offers readings of Olympian 1 and Bacchylides
11 to show how both epinician poets in praising athletic victors exploit the analogy
between purification and colonization. Colonization, purification, and victory are
all communal, civic activities; for each, the actions of the individual have
significant impact upon the welfare of the city at large. The final chapter shows
how Pindar extends the metaphor of victory and colonization to include marriage as
well. In Pythian 9 he describes colonization as a process of civilization, of cultivat-
ing the wild, and Delphic Apollo plays as key a role in this version of the city's
foundation as in the victory, celebrated this time as bridegroom.
Thus these last four chapters reveal the extent to which the narrative pattern,
cult, and metaphors of archaic colonization participate in the rhetoric of drama and
the epinician ode. Colonization is an inherently civic act, one that unites founding
hero and colony in a common bond of fame, and the choral genres of drama and
epinician poetry provide performance contexts suitable for the continued reenact-
ment and commemoration of a city's foundation. In addition, these extended liter-
ary texts help us see the ideology of colonization at work; the models of pur-
ification, bilingual wordplay, marriage, and athletic victory describe a memory of
colonization that is embedded in the larger networks of civic celebration and
praise.
Notes
1. The essay is quoted in full in Cushman 1855 pp. 31-38.

2. See also Hughes 1987 p. 7. Australian colonial traditions also contain the myth of an
"empty" continent, speckled with primitive animals and hardly less primitive men so that the
"fittest" inevitably triumphed. Thus the destruction of the Australian Aborigines was ratio-
nalized as natural law. Hughes quotes a settler: "Nothing can stay the dying away of the
Aboriginal race, which Providence has only allowed to hold the land until replaced by a finer
race" (C. Lockhart, replying to a circular letter from the Select Committee on the Aborig-
ines, New South Wales V & P [1849] p. 20).
3. White 1978 p. 86.
4. Cf. Edmunds 1990 pp. 1-17 for a working definition of myth and a discussion of the
different kinds of Greek storytelling. He suggests (p. 7) that we need to recognize "that the
Greeks had no taxonomy of narratives corresponding to the ones we use, e.g., the tripartite
scheme of myth, legend, and folktale."
5. Find. Pyth. 9.
6. Thuc. 6.3.2.
7. Strab. 6.1.15.
8. Turner 1981 pp. 149-53. As Claude Calame (1990 p. 279; 1991) points out, leg-
endary history does not exist for the Greeks as a specific narrative genre. Neither, I would
argue, does colonization poetry in the archaic period. Stories about the past, such as a colo-
nization tale, necessarily form part of other literary genres, and, as we will see in the final
chapters of this book, their form and nature are conditioned by the conventions of that genre.
On this question, see also Detienne 1986b and Brillante 1990. See the essays collected in
White 1978 and Hunt 1989 for discussion of these issues in modern historiography.
9. White 1978 p. 99.
10. White 1973; 1978.
11. White 1978 p. 84. See also p. 83: cmplotment is "simply the encodation of the facts
contained in the chronicle as components of specific kinds of plot structures. . . . " White
draws upon the work of Northrop Frye to identify four plot structures—romance, comedy,
tragedy, satire—that inform historical narrative.
12. White 1978 p. 88: "Viewed in a purely formal way," he suggests, "a historical nar-
rative is not only a reproduction of the events reported in it, but also a complex of symbols
which gives us directions for finding an icon of the structure of those events in our literary
imagination."
13. Douglas 1966; Geertz 1973; 1983; Turner 1974.
14. Geertz 1983 p. 58. See also Geertz 1973 pp. 412-53 where Geertz shows what
being a Balinese is "really like" through a careful study of the cockfight—a cultural practice
that is intimately linked to many of the larger social and economic principles that organize
Balinese society.
15. Colonization was indeed one response to overpopulation, land shortages, and civic
crisis, but the process of founding new cities overseas was also responsible for many subse-
quent changes in the Greek way of life. Although at first one might assume that colonization
presupposes a fully realized concept of the city-state at home, Snodgrass 1980 pp. 41 and 157
has argued that colonization, in fact, helped crystallize the essence of the polis on the Greek
mainland. See Martin 1951 p. 198 and Malkin 1987 pp. 261-66 for the suggestion that the
worship of the cult of the founder in the colonies may have prompted similar practices in
cities on the mainland. See the essays collected in Descoeudres 1990 for further examples of
how developments in architecture, vase painting, and the other arts were carried back to the
mainland from the colonies. Nagy 1990a p. 71 n. 96 suggests that a similar interaction oper-
ates in the poetic traditions of mother and daughter city, Miletus and Megara: "Just as the
mother city tends to replicate its social structure, divisions and all, in the daughter city, so
also the new social experiences of the daughter city, such as contacts with 'new' kinds of bar-
barians . . . become incorporated into the ideology of the mother city. . . . "
16. For a critique of Geertz, see Biersack 1989 and bibliography cited there.
17. Sahlins 1981; 1985. See also Turner 1974 pp. 23-30 and Fernandez 1974 for the
importance of studying conceptual analogies or cultural metaphors as a way to understand a
society as it undergoes and adapts to change.
18. Sahlins 1981 p. 11.
19. In many ways, Sahlins' model is very similar to another one which will be more
familiar to most classicists—that of oral formulaic theory. On a cultural level, just as on the
level of oral composition, new events and phenomena are continually absorbed into a preex-
isting framework. As Sahlins (1981 p. 7) inverts the famous saying: "The more things stay
the same, the more they change."
20. Cf. Greenblatt 1988 p. 5 where he defines a "poetics of culture" as the "study of the
collective making of distinct cultural practices and inquiry into the relations among those
practices." While recognizing its limitations for discussing archaic Greek texts, I have found
the "new historicism" useful in helping to recognize the active role that texts themselves play
in constructing reality. See, for example, Greenblatt 1988 and the essays collected in Veeser
1989. For various critiques of new historicism, see Fox-Genovese, Graff, Lentricchia, New-
ton, Pecora, Terdiman, B. Thomas, and Spivak in Veeser 1989.
21. Montrose (in Veeser 1989) p. 18. "The newer historical criticism is new in its
refusal of unproblematized distinctions between 'literature' and 'history,' between 'text' and
'context'; new in resisting a prevalent tendency to posit and privilege a unified and
autonomous individual—whether an Author or a Work—to be set against a social or literary
background."
22. Franklin 1979 p. 4.
23. Hughes 1987 p. 3 and note 4.
I
Narratives and Metaphors:
Translating the City into Text
1
Laying the Foundations:
Narrative and Cult
Concerning the births both of heroes and of men, Socrates, and of settlements—
how cities were founded long ago—in short, concerning all kinds of ancient his-
tory they [the Spartans] listen most gladly. . . .
(Plato, Hippias Maior 285d)
The Greeks loved to speculate about the beginnings of things. The birth of men and
heroes, the origins of cults and religious practices—all beginnings fascinated them,
and the founding of cities formed part of this aetiological repertoire. While founda-
tion poetry did not exist as an autonomous genre in the archaic period, tales of how
cities came to be settled were at home in many literary contexts—from the Homeric
poems to the works of the Hellenistic poet-scholars—and are best treated as a topos
or theme that could be embedded within elegiac poems, epinician odes, tragedy, or
the history of Chios.1 Hippias, in Plato's dialogue, suggests that a colonial tale told
the story of "how cities were founded long ago" (we; TO apxalov £<Tio6r|oav ai
noAeic;), and this chapter sets out to reconstruct a composite typology of such a nar-
rative. In order to talk about what Hayden White would call the "emplotment" of
the colonial narrative, I will draw upon a wide variety of ancient sources—epic,
lyric, drama, philosophical tracts, historical narratives, the works of later geogra-
phers and mythographers, inscriptions, and anecdotes—trying to avoid making value
distinctions between these very different kinds of texts. A typology of the colonial
narrative, once reconstructed, will tell us not how Greeks of the archaic period really
founded colonies, but rather how the Greeks as a culture remembered the archaic
colonization movement and how they continued to describe it to themselves.
The narrative pattern or "plot" of archaic colonization is a familiar one: (a) A
civic crisis (b) prompts the consultation of Apollo's oracle at Delphi. Apollo deliv-
ers an oracle that (c) authorizes the foundation of a colony overseas. The successful
colonial foundation then provides (d) the resolution to the original crisis, which will
be forever marked and memorialized through the cult of the founder.2 Readers of
Herodotus, in particular, will recognize this plot; similar accounts of civic crisis and
15
16 Narratives and Metaphors
Delphic consultation (but with different kinds of solutions) can be found throughout
the pages of his Histories. The famous "bones of Orestes" episode, for example,
follows this pattern but substitutes the translation of Orestes' bones to Sparta for
colonization as the solution to the particular crisis at home.3 Many of the legends
that cluster around the Greek lawgivers also tell a story in which Delphi plays an
important role in the movement from anomia to eunomia.4 It is clear that, in the
way that both Hayden White and Marshall Sahlins suggest, the Greeks adapt an
existing cultural framework, a common narrative pattern, to accommodate some-
thing new and to structure their memory of change.5 In proceeding through the
steps of this pattern, we will discover the broad range of detail and experience that
is encompassed under each of the general headings of crisis, Delphic consultation,
colonial foundation, and resolution.
Crisis
The subtext of much of colonial discourse in the archaic period is the reluctance to
leave home. While modern historians and archeologists still debate the various
motives that prompted such a large-scale colonial movement, the Greeks them-
selves tell us many times and in many ways that they were forced to leave home to
search for a new place to live; they are unwilling colonists, driven from home by a
myriad of catastrophic disasters.6 In fact, Greek colonial discourse in general tends
to emphasize those aspects of colonization that concern leaving Greece; the
accounts are much more vague about the colonists' ultimate destination and what
happens after they arrive on foreign soil.7
Crisis motivates movement, and a colonial tale above all must account for travel
from one land or city to another.8 The kind of crisis varies, of course, and by
reviewing a wide range of colonial tales, we can map out the many variants. On a
very basic level, some say that a shortage of land or food in mainland Greece, exac-
erbated or even created by natural disaster, led them to consider overseas settle-
ment. Thera, for example, is said to have colonized Cyrene because of a seven-year
drought.9 Strabo tells us that Rhegium was founded by Chalcidians who were ded-
icated as a tithe to Apollo because of crop failure; from Delphi, they were sent forth
on a colonial expedition.10
Overpopulation is certainly connected to this pressing need for productive land,
and Plato, in the Laws, mentions colonization as a method of population control for
his hypothetical state:
Moreover, in the end, if there is a complete failure in keeping the number of five
thousand and forty households constant, if there is an increase in the population
on account of the mutual affection between those who cohabit, and we find our-
selves at a loss, the age-old contrivance is at hand—which we have often spoken
of—we can send out colonies of such persons as is appropriate, as friends setting
out from friends. (740e)n
Overpopulation, or too many people competing for a limited source of livelihood, is

at the root of another variant of the colonial narrative as well, one in which family
members contest the inheritance of the family fortune or power. Herodotus tells us
Laying the Foundations: Narrative and Cult 17
that Theras, for example, was once regent for his two infant nephews at Sparta. But
when the boys grew up and took over the government, Theras found it difficult to
relinquish the rule and return to a subordinate position after having had a taste of
power. As a result, he led an expedition to the island of Callista, which he colo-
nized and named for himself.12
Often these familial conflicts arise between brothers, and this narrative scenario
is a familiar one from Greek literature: two brothers competing for a single throne.
Bacchylides recounts a dispute between brothers that prompts the founding of
Tiryns.13 Herodotus tells us that the Spartan Dorieus embarked upon a colonial
expedition because he could not tolerate being ruled by his brother, Cleomenes.14
Pausanias records a similar dispute between two brothers that prompted the Athe-
nian settlement of Ionia. Medon and Neleus, sons of the Athenian king Codrus,
quarreled over who would inherit the throne. Neleus refused to allow his brother to
rule over him because Medon was lame in one foot. The boys were thus sent to
Delphi to resolve their differences, and the priestess gave Athens to Medon to rule
and told Neleus to settle Ionia with his other brothers.15
We can read the tale of two brothers competing for a single throne as a kind of
narrative metonomy for political stasis; the two brothers represent rival factions
competing for power within a single city. Political crisis, as such, appears as a
motive in colonial traditions as well; often the colonists are the losing faction in a
civil war. The Partheniae, expelled from Lacedaemonia after the Messenian War,
for example, founded the colony of Tarentum.16 Himera was founded by Chalcidi-
ans from Zancle together with some political exiles from Syracuse—the Myletidae,
who had been defeated in a party struggle.17 Menecles of Barca claims similarly
that political strife was the reason Battus led the Theraean colonial expedition to
Cyrene.18
There is a strong tendency in Greek narrative of all kinds to personalize public
action, and as we have already seen, the motivation for colonial efforts is often
expressed in private or personal terms.19 Just as two brothers quarreling over status
and power within an individual family can represent civic stasis in a larger sense, an
individual's personal, often physical, trauma can also substitute within the tale for
larger civic problems. The case of Thera's colonization of Cyrene is a good illus-
tration. As part of his detailed account of the foundation of Cyrene, Herodotus
includes two versions of the crisis that caused the Theraeans to consult the Delphic
oracle. According to the Theraean account, when those consulting the oracle
ignored its first command to found a city in Libya, a seven-year drought fell upon
Thera, which ultimately led to the settlement of Cyrene.20 According to the tradi-
tion attributed to the Cyreneans, however, Herodotus says that Battus suffered from
a speech defect and this caused him to consult Delphi and eventually establish the
colony.21 In one account, the motivation is a personal, physical trauma (Battus'
stutter), and in the other version, it is a civic, natural disaster (drought); on the nar-
rative level, however, the two are synonymous; they both motivate the progression
of the narrative, and Herodotus himself underscores the interchangeablility of pub-
lic and private crisis. After Battus consults Delphi about his speech defect, but
before the colony is successfully established, Herodotus observes that "everything
began to go wrong, both with Battus himself and the others on the island."22
The clearest case of this narrative intersection of personal and civic crisis as the
motivation for colonization is murder. Strabo informs us that Orestes, when in exile
for killing his mother, founded a city and called it Argos Oresticum. We learn from
Apollodorus that Aetolus, an Elean by birth, killed Apis accidentally and fled to the
country of the Couretes, which subsequently took his name. Similarly, Aeolus
killed his stepmother, fled his home in Metapontum, and founded a city called
Lipara.23
The range of motives that initiate the colonial narrative describe colonization as
a response to disaster or crisis. Rarely is there explicit mention of the commercial
or agricultural benefits that must have lured the colonists to explore new sites;
instead colonial tales emphasize the negative factors—natural, political, personal,
and physical—that encouraged the colonists to leave mainland Greece. Downplay-
ing the positive or lucrative aspects of colonization, the colonial narrative describes
the colonists as unwilling exiles in desperate search of a new place to live.
Delphic Consultation
The next step in the narrative, the first step toward resolving the crisis at home, is to
consult the Delphic oracle. The hero of the colonial narrative is the expedition
leader, called an oikist, and it is his responsibility to seek the official sanction of
Delphic Apollo.24 Occasionally, instead of the oikist asking Apollo specifically
about a colony, some colonial tales describe an unsuspecting citizen who consults
the oracle about an unrelated matter but is told instead to lead a colonial expedition.
Myscellus of Rhype, for example, consults Apollo about having children and is told
to found a colony in Sicily:
Myscellus, short-in-the-back, Apollo the far-darter loves you and will

give you offspring. But first he commands this for you, that you make
your home in mighty Croton among the fair ploughland. (Diod. 8.17.1)
Similarly, as we have seen, the Theraean Battus asks about his stuttering problem
and receives a response ordering him to settle Libya.25 This "surprised oikist" motif
obviously supports the theme of reluctance in the colonial narrative and underlines
Apollo's legitimating role in the colonization process; it shifts the initiative (and
responsibility) for foreign settlement from the colonists to the god.26
More commonly, however, the leader is chosen first, and he then consults
Apollo about the settlement. Herodotus preserves an account of the Spartan
Dorieus' reasons for founding a colony, and in telling the story, the historian reveals
the customary importance of consulting Delphic Apollo before setting out on a
colonial expedition. Anaxandrides, king of Sparta, was happily married but without
children. The Ephors became worried about the lack of heirs for the throne and
forced the king to take another wife who would be able to give him children. The
second wife immediately conceived and produced an heir, Cleomenes. Coinciden-
tally, the first wife also became pregnant, and she too gave birth to a boy, Dorieus.
Now, as the story goes, the younger son, Dorieus, was a young man of excellent
skills and with every qualification to inherit the throne. Cleomenes, on the other
hand, was crazy, but he was the elder son, and so he succeeded to the kingship.
Dorieus was furious that his qualifications should be overlooked and that he
should be ruled by Cleomenes. He then decided to leave Sparta and found a colony.
But in his haste and anger, Herodotus tells us, Dorieus did not follow the customary
procedures:
He asked the Spartiates for people and led them on a colonial

expedition, neither consulting the oracle in Delphi about which land he
should go to and settle, nor doing any of the customary things. (5.42.2)
Herodotus tells us that Dorieus' first attempt at colonization was unsuccessful, and
he implies that this was precisely because he had failed to consult Delphic Apollo.27
In this way, Herodotus suggests that consulting Delphic Apollo was one of the
"customary" elements of both the colonial experience and narrative.
The nature of the oracular response that the oikist would receive from Delphi
varies. Sometimes the oracle contains directions to the new world. Indeed, in his
account of Dorieus' foundation experiences, Herodotus suggests that the primary
nature of the Delphic inquiry was geographical. Dorieus should have asked Apollo
"which land he was to go to and settle" (xpnoTqpico xpn^Mfvoc; ^ qvTiva yrjv
KTIOWV TQ). Oracles embedded within colonial tales often contain detailed direc-
tions or mention clear landmarks which, within the course of the tale, lead the
colonists to the site of their new city. For example, after being told to found the
colony of Croton, Myscellus received another oracle with specific directions:
The far-darter himself points this out to you; pay attention! Here is
unploughed Taphiassus, and there Chalcis; the land of the Curetes . . .
the sacred land, and these are the Echinades. Great is the ocean to the
left. Thus I would expect you not to miss the Lacinian cape, nor sacred
Crimisa, nor the river Aesarus. (Diod. 8. 17. 1)28
Plutarch also includes directions to colonial sites among a list of the things that are
prophesied by the Delphic oracle:
For [the oracle] designated many things, such as signs for [recognizing]
places, the appropriate times for activities, the shrines of gods across
the sea, and unspeakable tombs of heroes, hard to find for men setting
forth on a distant voyage from Greece. (Mor. 407f)
Plutarch subsequently names several expedition leaders—among them Battus and

Phalanthus—who used the oracular directions to discover the land that had been
given them.29
Another way that Delphic oracles provide directional help for colonial founders
is by designating an animal guide. Several colonial tales record oracles from
Apollo that tell them to follow specific animals to the site of the new colony. A fish
and a wild boar lead the colonists to Ephesus, for example. According to Cal-
limachus, Battus is led to Cyrene by a crow. Ilus, on the other hand, founded Ilium
on the spot where a speckled cow lay down. Argilus in Thrace was founded, in
obedience to an oracle, on the spot where a mouse appeared, and the town was
called Argilus after the Thracian word for mouse.30 The narrative motif of the ani-
mal guide may derive from the ver sacrum, or sacred spring ritual, which was more
common in Rome but also attested in Greece. This ritual demanded that part of a
community be dedicated as a "first fruits offering" to Apollo in return for relief
from some natural disaster such as drought or as part of a bargain to win a war.
Often these citizens, once dedicated to Delphic Apollo, were then sent out as
colonists, and one aspect of this ritual is that the colonists are led to their new home
by an animal guide.31
A final and more complex type of oracular response given to a potential colonial
founder is one containing riddling and punning language that must be decoded
before the colony can be founded. This kind of oracle thus provides a different, but
equally important, kind of sign (ar|^£Tov) that points the way to the colonial site.
Strabo, for example, records the following account, which he inherited from the ele-
giac poet Callinus, of the settlement of Hamaxitus in the Troad. When the Teucrians
arrived from Crete, they received an oracle that bade them "to stay on the spot
where the earthborn should attack them," and, he says, the attack took place around
Hamaxitus. At nightfall a great multitude of field mice swarmed out of the ground
and ate up all the leather in their arms and equipment. The Teucrians interpreted
this event as the solution to the puzzling oracle, and they remained there.32 The set-
tlement of Hamaxitus is thus predicated upon the correct interpretation of signs; the
Teucrians recognize the earthborn not as dangerous dragons but as harmless field
mice.
The consultation of the Delphic oracle is the turning point in the colonial narra-
tive, and its focus now shifts from Greece and Delphic Apollo to the new world and
the oikist. Emblematic of this shift in the narrative is an important ritual practice
worth mentioning at this point before moving on to the next stage of the narrative.
Upon leaving the metropolis, the oikist kindles a fire from the sacred hearthfire to
be transported to the site of the new colony. As Louis Gernet has argued, the public
hearthfire is an important symbol of a Greek city's political identity; it is kept in the
Prytaneion, a building that belongs to the city and is centrally located in the agora.33
The transferral of the common hearthfire thus secures the continuity of spirit
between mother city and colony, and this ritual action marks the actual voyage from
Greece to the new world.34
Colonial Foundation
Although the majority of literary accounts that deal explicitly with colonization stop
here on the shores of the new world, the important conclusion to the colonization
narrative is contained within other literary contexts, and from these sources, we can
piece together the end of the story. As we noted earlier, colonial discourse in gen-
eral is much more specific about leaving Greece than it is about arriving overseas,
and this vagueness of narrative purpose is perhaps reflected in the unwillingness to
describe what the colonial landscape looks like. Descriptions of colonial sites are
often retrojected into the text of the colonial oracles that prompt the foundation, and
this tendency toward proleptic description can be read as part of the general reluc-
tance to treat the actual settlement itself within the colonial narrative proper. A pas-
sage from the Odyssey, however, mentions the island of the Cyclopes as a possible
colonization site, and its physical landscape is described as follows:
There is an overgrown island that spreads, away from the harbor,

neither nearby the land of the Cyclopes nor far from it, wooded;
innumerable wild goats are born there, for no human footsteps disturb
them, nor do hunters track them, who in the forest suffer hardships as
they haunt the peaks of the mountains; nor is it held by herded flocks,
nor farmers, but all its days, neither sown nor plowed, it is bereft of
men and nourishes bleating goats. (9.116-24)
The island is uninhabited (ou (JEV yap rraToc; dvGpcbnwv), nor has it been tamed
by agriculture (aonapToc; <ai avqpoToc;). The description goes on to explain that
the island is not poor (<a<n, 131) but would bear all things in season with its plenti-
ful rainfall, unfailing vines, rich soil, and level plow lands (131-35). In sum, it
would make a good settlement (vqoov £u<Ti|j£'vqv, 130).
Clearly, what is being described here is an unspoiled, uninhabited, golden-age
land similar to that which Hesiod portrays in the Works and Days.35 In the Laws,
Plato also recommends unoccupied, self-sufficient territory as the ideal location for
a new city. At the beginning of Book IV, Clinias and the Athenian discuss possible
sites for their hypothetical city, and the Athenian asks if there will be any state bor-
dering close upon the site. Clinias replies: "Not at all, and that is the reason for set-
tling it. Since there was an emigration from this place long ago, the land has been
empty and unused for a long time."36
While Plato and the Homeric passage describe the ideal colonial site as abun-
dantly fruitful and uninhabited, Archilochus overlooks the prosperous and fruitful
nature of Thasos and describes the island, the site of Paros' colonial expedition, as
the bare back of an ass:
but this [island], stands like the backbone of an ass, crowned with wild
jungle; (Fr.l 7 T)37
The quality of wildness (uAqq aypir|<;) is present in Archilochus' description as in
the Homeric account, but here with a much more pessimistic tone. In another frag-
ment, Archilochus compares Thasos unfavorably to the land of Siris:
For the land is nothing fine nor desired nor lovely, such as that beside
the streams of the Siris (Fr.l8 T)
In addition, this land, unlike the Homeric island, is already occupied, and Arch-
ilochus recalls the hostility between Greeks and the native Thracians as Paros colo-
nized the island of Thasos.38 While the Homeric passage seems to be influenced by
descriptions of ideal, golden-age landscapes, Archilochus' poetry reveals what might
lie behind this rhetorical strategy—concerns about settling foreign territory, ques-
tions about the nature of the land and of the people who live there.39
In mapping out a colonial settlement, as in all other facets of the colonial narra-
tive, each step is presented as the work of the oikist alone, and once the site is cho-
sen, the oikist is responsible for the organization and building of the new city.
First, he must make land divisions for the other colonists, and colonial inscriptions
show that one of the attractions of colonization was the opportunity for each
colonist to acquire his own portion of land. The decree that details Thera's settle-
ment of Cyrene, for example, even guarantees allotments of land to subsequent
colonists:
If the colonists establish the settlement, any of their fellow citizens who
sail to Libya at a later point shall have a share in citizenship and honors
and shall be allotted a portion of the unoccupied land.40
Athenaeus specifically mentions a colonist's land allotment when recounting an
amusing anecdote attributed to Archilochus about a member of the Syracusan colo-
nial expedition. As part of a long list of profligate and extravagant men, Athenaeus
describes Aethiops of Corinth:
Such a man was Aethiops the Corinthian (as Demetrius of Scepsis says), who is
mentioned by Archilochus. It seems that this Aethiops, when voyaging with
Archias to Sicily to found Syracuse, was led by his love of pleasure and lack of
self-control to give away the allotment of land he was to receive upon arrival to
his dinner companion in exchange for a honey cake. (Ath. 4.167d-e)
The oikist is the one to mark out these portions of land and to distribute them to the
other members of the expedition. In the mock colonization that takes place in
Aristophanes' play The Birds, many of the oikist's responsibilities are represented
by characters who appear one after the other onstage. One of these is Meton, the
surveyor, who comes to measure out the new territory:
I want to land-survey this air of yours and mete it out by acres. (995-96)41
Similarly, Callimachus refers to Apollo in his role as patron deity of colonization as
"measuring out the cities of men."42
In addition to dividing and distributing the land for his fellow colonists, the oik-
ist marks out the boundaries for the precincts of the gods and for the city itself. In
another passage from the Odyssey, Homer portrays Nausithous as the founder of
Phaeacia and describes the duties of an oikist:
From here godlike Nausithous had removed and led [them] and settled
them in Scheria, far away from men who eat bread; he drove a wall
about the city and built houses and established temples of the gods and
allotted land holdings. (6.7-10)
Within this composite profile of the oikist, we see that he builds temples and altars
for the gods.43 Pindar as well tells us that Battus, the founder of Cyrene, estab-
lished altars for the gods as part of his duties as city founder:
And he founded greater altars for the gods and established for
Apollonian processions which protect mortals a straightcut level [path]
to be a paved road, resounding with the pounding of horses' hooves . . .
(Pyth. 5.89-93)
Similarly, Thucydides records that Thucles, the founder of Naxos, set up an altar to
Apollo Archegetes outside the city, upon which, whenever sacred embassies sail
from Sicily, they first sacrifice.44
Finally, as part of founding a colony, the oikist names the new city.45 In The
Birds, once Euelpides and Peisthetaerus succeed in forming their new city in the
clouds, the chorus asks about the next step, and Peisthetaerus answers, "First we
must give the city some great and glorious name."46 Often, the city takes its name
from the oikist himself or from some member of his family. Theras, for example,
led his colonial expedition to an island formerly called Callista and named the new
colony Thera. Alcmaeon founded a city after being exiled for the murder of his
mother and called it Acarnania after his son, Acarnan.47 Sometimes, a colony takes
its name from some aspect of its founding oracle. Aegae in Macedonia, for exam-
ple, is named after the goats (aTy ec;) mentioned in the founding prophecy of Apollo.
Gela also takes its name from a Delphic pun on the verb to laugh (ysXaw). Finally,
the new colony can be named after some geographical phenomenon, a stream or
river.48 Thucydides tells us that Acragas was named after a river; one tradition has
it that the name of Rhegium is derived from a pun on the Greek verb to break—
avappaynvai: Diodorus explains that Sicily was originally a peninsula but later
became an island. The isthmus at its most narrow point was subjected to the dash of
waves, and a gap was created, hence the place was called Rhegium. Many years
later, a city was founded and called by the same name.49
Resolution and Context: The Cult of the Founder
The death of the oikist provides the colony with a point of transition from colony to
independent city-state and thus marks the solution to the crisis and the end of the
colonial narrative. Throughout his lifetime, the founder of the colony occupies a
position of power and respect; after his death, he is worshipped through cult as the
city's founding hero. The cult of the oikist, a universal practice in Greek colonies,
has a great influence on colonial discourse, and for this reason, it is worth reviewing
here what we know about this ritual practice. The cult of the founder plays an
important role in a new city's ritual life and provides a context for the continued cir-
culation of the metaphors that structure its civic identity.
First, the oikist was customarily buried in the agora, in the center of the city.
The Greeks normally buried their dead outside the city limits, and the exception in
the case of the founder underlines the civic nature of this cult. The religious func-
tion of the agora centers on the identity of the polis. Space devoted to the major
Greek deities in the center of the city is reduced, and instead we find cults whose
primary duty is to reinforce the city's security.50 Returning to the passage from
Pythian 5 about Battus' duties as oikist of Cyrene, we will see that he was buried at
the edge of the agora:
There, having died, he lies apart, at the edge of the agora. Blessed, on
the one hand, he lived among men, and then was a hero, honored by the
people. (93-95)51
This passsage is confirmed by a scholion to Pindar's Olympian 1 that tells us it was
customary to bury the founder in the center of the city—that is, in the agora.52
Second, the cult of the founder was celebrated annually with sacrifices and ath-
letic games. Pindar lists Battus' enjoyment of heroic honors as the culmination of
his duties and responsibilities as oikist. Because of his position as founder, he was
honored by men while alive and then worshipped as a hero after death.53 Pausanias
mentions that the cult of Theras, the eponymous founder of Thera, was still cele-
brated in his day; he confirms this as an annual event:
And the Theraeans even now still honor him every year as an oikist.
(3.1.8)
As to the nature of these annual celebrations, Herodotus, in his discussion of Milti-
ades the elder, says that when Miltiades died, the people he ruled, the Dolonci from
the Thracian Chersonese, honored him in an exceptional manner—in the manner
due to an oikist:
Since he died, the people of the Chersonese sacrifice to him as is

customary [to honor] a city founder; they hold chariot races and athletic
contests. (6.38.1)
It was customary, then, to celebrate the founder's cult with sacrifices and games. In
fact, Pindar, in Olympian 7, mentions that the victor, Diagoras, competed twice at
the games held in honor of the founder of Rhodes, Tlepolemus, and that sacrifices
were part of the celebration.54
Diodorus provides us with another profile of a founder's career, which also
includes immortal honors after death. He tells the story of the founding of Tenedos:
Tennes was the son of Cycnus, who was king of Colone in the Troad. He was a
man conspicuous in his excellence. Tennes gathered colonists and made an assault
upon an uninhabited island called Leucophrys. He portioned out allotments of
land to those arranged under him and founded a city named after himself—Tene-
dos. Serving the city well and bestowing great gifts upon the citizens, he won
great favor in his lifetime. Upon his death, he received immortal honors—they
built him a sacred precinct and honored him like a god with sacrifices. (5.83.2-3)
Diodorus sums up the colonial narrative well: Tennes gathers colonists and settles
an uninhabited land; he divides up the land allotments, and names the city after
himself. After death, he receives the honors of a hero.55
Independent of the metropolis, the founder's cult belongs entirely to the new
city; it both represents and protects the city's emerging self-identity—even when
that civic identity changes.56 Thucydides, for example, tells us that the people of
Narratives and Metaphors
Amphipolis altered their foundation tradition. After the battle of Amphipolis they
chose to adopt Brasidas, the Spartan, as their founder in the place of Hagnon, the
Athenian:
After this all the allies, following in full armor, gave Brasidas a public funeral in
front of what is now the agora. Thereafter the people of Amphipolis made an
enclosure around his [Brasidas'] tomb, and they sacrificed to him as to a hero and
honored him by holding games and making annual offerings to him. They
officially named him founder of their colony, and they razed all the buildings of
Hagnon, destroying everything that could possibly remind them that Hagnon had
founded the place. (5.11.1)
Thucydides explains that it had become more politically advantageous for the city
to be connected to Spartans than to Athenians at this time; as a result, they
exchanged founders. Perhaps surprisingly, it was not perceived as dangerous or
threatening to the citizens of Amphipolis to rid themselves of their original found-
ing hero as long as they honored another in his place. The ritual function of the
founder's cult is more important than the historical fact of any one individual
founder. The Greeks' willingness to play fast and loose with their foundation tradi-
tions can also help explain why other important events that occur later in a city's
history may be retrojected to the date of its foundation.57 The Greeks are creative
with the details of their foundation tales because these tales do more than merely
recount the past; they respond to a continually changing present.
The colonial narrative, then, as we have outlined it, describes founding a colony
in the archaic age as a Delphically sponsored solution to civic crisis at home. Once
the colony is successfully established, the death of the oikist and the annual celebra-
tion of him as founding hero both marks the end of the colonial narrative and pro-
vides a context for its continued retelling. As we will see in our subsequent discus-
sion of colonial discourse as it is embedded in the Pindaric ode and Aeschylean
drama, the founding hero and his cult play an important role in maintaining the new
city's civic identity.
In addition, each of the first three stages in the narrative—crisis, Delphic con-
sultation, city foundation—influences (and is influenced by) a cultural metaphor
that provides deeper insight into the ways the Greeks thought about and remem-
bered colonization.58 Within colonial discourse, murder is emblematic of civic cri-
sis (in all its many versions) as the impetus for colonization. Murder is a crime
committed by an individual, but one whose punishment is the responsibility of the
entire civic community; colonization as well unites the actions of an individual and
his community. But more important, murder (and the purification it requires)
describes colonization as the movement from a state of disordered chaos to an
ordered new city. The Delphic consultation, the next step in the colonial narrative,
motivates and appropriates the use of riddling and punning oracles (together with
their solutions) as another way to represent colonization. Enigmatic oracles address
and confront vital issues of colonization itself—interpreting a riddling oracle
requires an act of verbal discrimination that is homologous to the act of staking out
territory upon settling new land. Bilingual puns repatriate foreign words in the
same way that colonization hellenizes foreign land.
The first two stages of the colonial narrative, together with their related cultural
metaphors, focus on leaving Greece and in particular emphasize Delphic Apollo's
role in the colonial process. Now, once the colonial narrative reaches foreign soil,
new conceptual strategies and metaphors are necessary. Marriage functions as a
third metaphor for describing colonization—one which specifically addresses the
contact between Greeks and foreigners once the Greeks arrive in the new world.
Purification practices and the solutions to riddling oracles depend upon the concept
of division; it is important that everything be separated out into its rightful place.
Marriage, on the other hand, is an integrative institution and thus provides a model
for the productive union of foreign and Greek. The following three chapters will
take up each of these three models in an attempt to explore the metaphors and rich
modes of thought that the Greeks adopt to conceptualize and represent the phenom-
enon of colonization. What does founding a city have in common with being exiled
for murder? Why is it like solving a riddle? marriage? In answering questions like
these, in learning to "think with" the Greek colonists, we begin to appreciate the
complexities of the archaic colonization movement and its continued importance in
Greek life.59
Notes
1. This is a topic I intend to pursure in further detail in the future. Genre in the archaic
period was determined by occasion, not by topic or theme, and there was no specific occasion
for performing foundation poetry. Instead, stories of city foundations were embedded in
many other kinds of poetic and prose accounts. For definitions of genre in the archaic period
along these lines, see Harvey 1955; Rossi 1971; Calame 1974.
2. We should note here that Victor Turner's model of social drama (breach, crisis,
redressive action, reintegration or recognition of schism) precisely fits this narrative
sequence. See Turner 1974 pp. 23-59, esp. pp. 37—42, for his definition of the four stages of a
social drama. There is, in fact, another kind of narrative used to describe the foundation of
cities whose pattern is "god rapes nymph, and nymph then gives her name to the city founded
at the spot of the rape." In Chapter 4,1 will discuss this alternative narrative pattern in more
detail and its relations to the pattern discussed here.
3. Boedeker 1993 discusses this episode along these lines.
4. See Szegedy-Maszak 1978.
5. See Sahlins 1981 for his theory for understanding historical change within the frame-
work of mythical continuity. White 1978 p. 86 elaborates the role narrative plays in this
project.
6. For discussions by modern historians of the motivations of the archaic colonial move-
ment, see Gwynn 1918; Blakeway 1933; Snodgrass 1980; Graham 1982; Ridgway 1990.
7. Cf. Moggi 1983 p. 986. Colonial accounts faithfully record the name of the mother
city, for example, and that of the founder; they also record the circumstances in the mother
city which necessitate colonization, but they say very little about what happens when the
Greeks arrive at the site of the colony.
8. There are, of course, other ways to motivate movement, and for this reason, the colo-
nial narrative often intersects with traditions of itinerant heroes—those already on the road.
The return from the Trojan War, for example, provides the narrative pretext for many a colo-
nial tale. See, for example, Metapontum: Strab. 6.1.15; Croton: Strab. 6.1.12; Amphi-
lochian Argos: Thuc. 2.68; cf. Strab. 7.7.7. Colonial traditions borrow from the itineraries of
other mythological figures as well. Diodorus (5.60.4—5) tells us that the city of Cyrnus was
founded when Inachus sent Cyrnus, one of his high commanders, out to look for his daugh-
ter, lo, and warned him not to return without her. Cyrnus searched over many parts of the
inhabited world, but when he could not find lo, he put ashore in Caria on the Chersonese and
founded a city there named after himself. Cf. Ap. Rhod. (Argon. 4.514—21) for a similar
story about the Colchians who had been sent out by King Aeetes to capture Medea and the
golden fleece and were afraid to return home empty-handed. The legendary travels of Hera-
cles have also been entwined with several colonization accounts: Sardinia: Diod. 4.29.1;
Psophis: Paus. 8.24.1. Colonial legends borrow from the well-established prestige of heroic
figures just as many Greeks trace individual family genealogies back to important deities and
heroes. In addition, by linking the foundation of their city to the labors of Heracles or the
Trojan War heroes, the colonists of the archaic period can claim prior rights to the land that
they have just settled—an important consideration since, in many cases, the Greek colonists
occupied land at the expense of indigenous populations.
9. Hdt. 4.151.1.
10. Strab. 6.1.6.
11. Notice that Plato presents colonization as an "age-old contrivance," a well-estab-
lished method for population control. Cf. Laws 707e where it is suggested that those com-
prising a settlement would be "volunteers from all parts of Crete—the masses in the various
communities presumably having grown too great for the local food supply."
12. Hdt. 4.147.2-3. Cf. Labate 1972 pp. 92-94.
13. Bacchyl. 11.59-81.
14. Hdt. 5.42.
15. Pausanias 7.2.1. See Parke and Wormell 1956 vol. 1 p. 57; the oracle received by
the brothers is included in their catalogue #300. Cf. Burnett 1988 for the suggestion that this
theme of fraternal conflict (Polyneices and Eteocles) within a colonial context is present in
the Lille Stesichorus fragment as well.
16. Strab. 6.3.2. An external threat could motivate the move as well; Herodotus (1.164—
68) explains that the colonists of both Elea and Abdera left their Ionian homelands in order to
escape the threatening tyranny of Harpagus. Plato mentions these political factors among
other motives for colonization in the Laws 708b. He describes colonists as "being either
squeezed out by lack of room or forced by some other such pressing need. At times, too, the
violence of civil strife might compel a whole section of a state to emigrate; and on one occa-
sion an entire state went into exile, when it was totally crushed by an overpowering attack."
17. Thuc. 6.5.1.
18. FGrH210F6.
19. See Labate 1972 for a discussion of individual initiative as a topos in colonization
tales.
20. Hdt. 4.150-53.
21. Hdt. 4.154-58.
22. Hdt. 4.156.
23. Argos Oresticum: Strab. 7.7.8; cf. Eur. Or. 1643-52. Aetolia: Apollod. 1.7.6.
Lipara: Diod. 4.67.4-6.
24. For discussions of the evidence for the extent of Delphic Apollo's involvement in the
archaic colonization movement, see Forrest 1957; Lombardo 1972; Graham 1982; Malkin
1987a; Morgan 1990 pp. 172-78. For the archeological evidence concerning the dates of
Apollo's cult and oracle at Delphi, see Roux 1976; Rolley 1983; Morgan 1990 pp. 148-90.
See Sourvinou-Inwood 1987b for the problems with reading the myth of Apollo's installation
at Delphi as history. Again, I am not concerned here with the realia of Delphi's role in the
colonial movement, but with the role of the Delphic oracle in the colonial narrative.
25. Hdt.4.155.3.
26. Cf. Malkin 1987a pp. 27-28; "surprised oikist" is his term.
27. Subsequently, Dorieus did consult the god to find out if his new plan would be suc-
cessful, namely acquiring the territory in western Sicily that had originally been conquered
by Heracles. The Pythia says yes, but as Herodotus explains, Dorieus was unsuccessful
again—this time because he was distracted from his original plan.
28. Cf. Strab. 6.1.12 = Antiochus FGrH 555 F10.
29. Plut. Mor. 408a. It is not necessary that these directions actually be helpful to the
colonists when they land on foreign shores, but geographical details explicitly included
within the oracle would continue to stake out a claim to the territory long after the Greeks
orginally founded the colony.
30. Ephesus: Ath. 361d-e; Cyrene: Callim. Ap. 65-68; Ilium: Apollod. 3.12.3;
Argilus: Heraclid. Pont. De rebus publicis 42 (FHG ed. Miiller p. 224).
31. Strabo (5.4.12) provides the evidence that this ritual may have been observed in
Greece as well as Rome. See Heurgon 1957 for a complete discussion of the ritual. See
Pease 1917; Vian 1963 for discussions of animal guides within colonial tales.
32. Strab. 13.1.48.
33. Gernet 1981 p. 328; see Burkert 1985 pp. 60-64 on fire rituals in general.
34. Graham 1964 p. 25: "The intention of this ritual act was clearly to make the new
community in the deepest possible way continuous with the old." Cf. Gernet 1981; Malkin
1987a pp. 114—34. At the hearth, a city extends civic hospitality to strangers; Aristotle (Pol.
1322b26ff) tells us that it is the source of public authority. As a guarantee of its efficacy, the
fire must be periodically renewed. Plutarch (Mor. 296f-297a) tells us that when the
hearthfire at Plataea was defiled during the Persian wars, for example, it was restored from
the hearth at Delphi. This renewal of fire, subsequently an annual event, assures the perpetua-
tion of the community at large.
35. Hesiod WD 109-20. Cf. Nagy 1990b pp. 73-74. Although I would argue that the
point of this golden-age colonial description is to emphasize the island's lack of previous civ-
ilization more than (or at least as much as) its wealth.
36. Plato Laws 704c. Earlier he has mentioned that the site has excellent harbors and is
practically self-sufficient.
37. Cf. Joseph Bank's description of Cape Everard, Victoria: "It resembled in my imag-
ination the back of a lean cow, covered in general with long hair, but nevertheless where her
scraggy hip bones have stuck out further than they ought accidental rubbs and knocks have
entirely bar'd them of their share of covering" (cited in Hughes 1987 p. 53).
38. Frs. 19, 88, 120 (Tarditi). Cf. Graham 1978 pp. 61-98.
39. The nature of the relationships between the Greeks and the native populations is a
significant gap in the colonial narrative. Much work has been done recently on this topic, see
Moggi 1983; the essays collected in Modes de contact; the essays in Descoeudres 1990.
40. Meiggs and Lewis 1969 No. 5 lines 30-33; cf. Graham 1964 pp. 224-26 for transla-
tion and text. The Brea decree also makes provisions for allotments of land; cf. Graham
1964 pp. 228-29.
41. Arrowsmith' s (1961) translation.
42. Callim. Ap. 55-56: 0oi3co 8' £on6|j£voi noAicx; 8i€|jETprioavTo av0pamoi.
43. In establishing the religious precincts for the gods, the colonies used the strategic
placement of temples and altars as a way both to reinforce ties with the mother city and to
establish a sense of a Greek civic identity in the face of the native cultures. Cults and altars
were built in the center of the city, clustered in and around the agora, which provide a con-
nection and sense of continuity with the metropolis. The hearthfire, transported by the oikist
from the mother city, occupies a central place in the new colony as well. On the outskirts of
the civic territory, sanctuaries were also established to delineate the boundaries between
Greek and foreign territories. For a discussion of this bi-polar nature of Greek civic religion
see de Polignac 1984.
44. Thuc. 6.3.1. Cf. Malkin 1986 on the origins and significance of altar to Apollo
Archegetes.
45. Thuc. 4.102.3-4 on Amphipolis.
46. Ar.Av. 808-10.
47. Thera: Paus. 3.1.7-8; Acarnania: Thuc. 2.102.5-6. Cf. Malkin 1985 on epony-
mous founders and names of colonies in the historical period.
48. In the Laws 704a, Plato gives several suggestions for the source of a new city's name;
it might be derived from some local phenomenon, a river or spring, or some local deity might
give the colony its name. Obviously, a city name can be derived from more than one source.
We will discuss these important multiple and "folk etymologies" further in Chapter 3.
49. Acragas: Thuc. 6.4.4; Rhegium: Diod. 4.85.3.
50. See Martin 1951 pp. 197-201 for a discussion of the burial of city founders in the
agora. Malkin 1987a pp. 189-240 collects the literary and archeological evidence for the cult
of the founder.
51. Cf. scholia at Aristophanes Plut. 925: "The Cyreneans honor him (Battus) as the
Archegetes."
52. Drachmann 1964 vol. 1 p. 49: oi yap OIKIOTOU EV pEoaic; TaTq rroAeaiv £0an-
TOVTO e£, k'Gouq.
53. In the case of Cyrene, we are fortunate to have archeological corroboration of the
founder's tomb, located as Pindar describes, at the edge of the agora. See Stucchi 1965 pp.
58-65; Malkin 1987a pp. 214-16.
54. Find. Ol. 7.77-82.
55. One significant omission, however, is the Delphic consultation.
56. Martin 1951 pp. 198-201. He remarks that these agora cults are especially impor-
tant in the colonies that are less closely allied with the religious tradition of the mainland
cities; instead, the colonies make the founding hero responsible for protecting the city. See
also de Polignac 1984 p. 145: burial in the center of the city replicates the movement from
outside to inside, which is part of the formation of the city.
57. A comparable phenomenon happens in our culture where many prominent events in
American history are said to have taken place on the fourth of July. See also Berard 1983 p.
57 on the relative flexibility of hero cult with respect to other religious sanctuaries. He
observes that a city will revamp its founding hero as is needed; there is no real difference
between a mythical archegetes and historical oikists from this point of view.
58. On the conceptual use of metaphor, see, for example, White 1973; 1978; Geertz
1973; 1983; Turner 1974; Sahlins 1981; the essays collected in Clifford and Marcus 1986;
Lakoff and Turner 1989.
59. Geertz 1973 p. 23 for the methodological model of "thinking with" another society.
2
Murderous Founders
It is said that Orestes once took possession of Orestias—when in exile for the
murder of his mother—and left the country bearing his name; it is also said that
he founded a city and called it Argos Oresticum. (Strab. 7.7.8)
The colonial narrative opens at a moment of civic crisis—drought, plague, or civil

unrest threatens the security and stability of the city. Alternatively, personal
trauma—childlessness or fraternal conflict—substitutes for civic crisis within the
narrative. In either case, the city (or individual) in distress consults the Delphic ora-
cle to learn what must be done, and often Apollo suggests a colonial expedition as
the necessary solution to the problem at hand. But perhaps the most striking narra-
tive scenario, one this chapter will investigate further, describes the city founder as
a murderer sent into permanent exile. Plutarch, for example, tells the following
such account of the colonial foundation of Syracuse:
Melissus had a son named Actaeon, the most handsome and modest young man of
his age; he had many lovers, especially Archias, a descendant of the Heracleidae
and the most conspicuous man in Corinth both in wealth and general power.
When Archias was not able to persuade the boy to be his lover, he decided to
carry him off by force. He gathered together a crowd of friends and servants, and
they went to Melissus' house in a drunken revelry to try to take the boy away.
Actaeon's father and friends resisted; the neighbors ran out and helped pull
against the assailants, and in the end Actaeon was pulled to pieces and killed. The
boys then ran away, and Melissus carried the corpse of his son into the market-
place of the Corinthians and showed it, asking reparations from those who had
done these things. But the Corinthians did nothing more than pity the man.
Unsuccessful, Melissus went away and waited for the Isthmian festival where he
went up to the temple of Poseidon and decried the Bacchiadae and reminded the
god of his father Habron's good deeds. Calling upon the gods, he threw himself
down from the rocks. Not long after this, drought and plague befell the city.
When the Corinthians consulted the god about relief, he told them that the anger
of Poseidon would not subside until they sought punishment for Actaeon's death.
Archias learned these things since he was one of those consulting the oracle, and
he decided of his own free will not to return to Corinth. Instead he sailed to Sicily
and founded the colony of Syracuse. There he became father of two daughters,
Ortygia and Syracusa, and was treacherously killed by Telephus, his lover who
had sailed with him to Sicily, in charge of a ship. (Mor. 772e-773b)
31
This elaborate colonial account contains many intriguing narrative details—unre-

quited love, plague, suicide—but perhaps the most surprising is the element of mur-
der. Not all accounts of the colonization of Syracuse, however, tell this same story.
Thucydides, in fact, tells a much simpler version of the settlement of Syracuse:
Archias, one of the Heracleidae from Corinth, founded Syracuse, having first
expelled the Sicels from the island where the inner city now is—though it is no
longer surrounded by water. (6.3.2)
The basic facts of the settlement remain the same (Archias, the Heracleidae,
Corinth), but the discrepancies between the two accounts raise some interesting
questions about how the Greeks reconciled mythically the invasive reality of colo-
nization with their ideals of autochthony or a peaceful coexistence with indigenous
peoples. Plutarch recounts a story of murder that results in a colonial expedition.
Thucydides, on the other hand, omits the murder of Actaeon, but instead describes
the forcible expulsion of native Sicels that followed the Greek settlement of the
colonial site. Given the nature and scarcity of our sources, we can probably never
know "what really happened" (and this is not a question I want to ask), but we can
still learn a great deal about how the Greeks conceptualized colonization from the
kinds of stories they tell. In this chapter, we will see that Plutarch's version of the
colonization of Syracuse is, in fact, part of a larger pattern of colonial representation
dating back to the Homeric poems—one that omits mention of the bloodshed inher-
ent in colonizing foreign lands and substitutes for it stories of Greek colonists as
murderers in exile.
If we return to Plutarch's account of the founding of Syracuse, we recognize the
pivotal role that the Delphic oracle plays in the colonial narrative.1 Here, an act of
murder precipitates civic pollution, which in turn prompts the consultation of the
oracle. The recommended solution is that the murderer be sent into exile to expiate
the crime; the exile begins as punishment for Actaeon's murder but then becomes
Syracuse's founding expedition. This particular tale closely adheres to the colonial
narrative pattern we outlined in the first chapter, but what lies behind this variant?
Why focus on a crime like murder as the way to describe the impetus for coloniza-
tion? Callimachus, writing centuries after the archaic colonization movement,
praises Apollo for helping men found cities in such a way that suggests a connec-
tion between the purification that murder demands and the institution of coloniza-
tion. Apollo and his oracle at Delphi were especially instrumental in founding Cal-
limachus' birthplace, the Theraean colony of Cyrene, and Callimachus tells the
story of its foundation as part of his hymn to Apollo. When he invokes Apollo here
as founder of cities, Callimachus calls him Phoebus; in fact, he emphatically refers
to the god as Phoebus three times in three lines:
Following Phoebus men measured out their cities, for Phoebus always
takes pleasure in the establishment of cities; Phoebus himself weaves
their foundations. (Ap. 55-57)
Murderous Founders 33
Traditionally in Greek literature, as Phoebus, Apollo purifies men; he cleanses their

houses and cities of pollution.2 In this specific context, however, such a choice of
appellation is puzzling—why invoke a cathartic Apollo to build cities? Cal-
limachus gently challenges us, I think, to make a connection between purification
and colonization, and that connection is Phoebus Apollo, the god who weaves the
foundations of cities.
Surely, as Irad Malkin has suggested, Apollo's role in the Callimachean hymn is
metaphorical, but identifying the metaphor is only half the battle—we must now ask
how it works.3 Why is Phoebus Apollo, a purifying deity, an appropriate metaphor-
ical guide for Greek colonists? Literary theorists and anthropologists alike tell us
that metaphors function as a conceptual framework for describing the unknown in
terms of the known, and my plan is to unpack Callimachus' metaphor along these
lines. In this chapter, I will first focus on Apollo and the purification process that
murder demands as a conceptual analogy, a metaphor, to describe colonization.
Second, I will ask how this conceptual analogy is in turn linked to a particular vari-
ant of the colonial narrative, one in which a murderer consults Delphi to be purified
and is told to found a colony.
First, let us explore Apollo's role as a purifier of murderers and its relevance for
colonial representation. Apollo is an important civic deity for the Greeks, and he
helps maintain a sense of cosmic and civic order by providing the necessary
purification once a city is threatened by some sort of pollution or miasma. The con-
cept of pollution is less a system of rationalization than a vehicle for the expression
of social disruption: pollution represents chaos, and purification corresponds to the
subsequent restoration of order to society.4 It is especially the need for purification
in cases of murder that demands Apollo's participation and provides the connection
with colonization legends.5
In the epic poems, homicide disturbs civic or community order, and this threat
is addressed by sending the murderer directly into exile.6 Exile appears as early as
Draco's law as well as the punishment for unintentional homicide.7 Although this
penalty for unintentional homicide may reflect a sense of reduced culpability—pre-
meditated murder could be punished by death—the ensuing pollution was perceived
to be equally dangerous to the community at large.8 The time frame and the route
of exile were carefully prescribed; even the unintentional killer must keep out of
Attica and away from games and festivals attended by all Greeks. If he returned, he
could be killed.9 In the Laws, Delphi is considered the arbiter of purification prac-
tices such as exile for murder, and Plato tells the following "ancient tale" (apxaiwv
|ju0wv) as the rationale behind this punishment:
It is said that the man killed by violence, who has lived in a free manner, when
newly dead is angry with his killer, and he himself is filled with dread and horror
on account of the violence suffered; when he sees his own murderer going about
in the very spots which he himself had frequented, he is terrified; and being dis-
turbed himself, he disturbs the killer as much as possible (having memory as his
ally)—both the man himself and all his doings. For this reason the killer must
keep clear of his victim for all the seasons of an entire year, and he must avoid the
dead man's usual spots throughout his native country. (Laws 865d-e)
Similarly in the Third Tetralogy attributed to Antiphon, the speaker for the prosecu-
tion argues that "the victim, robbed of the gifts bestowed by god upon him, natu-
rally leaves behind him the angry spirits of vengeance, god's instruments of punish-
ment."10 Not just a personal matter between murderer and victim, it was considered
a civic responsibility to address cases of homicide, for if an act of murder was not
avenged or acknowledged in some way, the whole community would suffer. Fol-
lowing this same logic of contamination, the defendant in a speech of Antiphon
claims as evidence of his innocence that he has never brought disaster to the com-
munity at large:
I hardly think I need remind you that many a man with unclean hands or some
other form of defilement who has embarked on shipboard with the innocent has
involved them in his own destruction. Others, while they have escaped death,
have had their lives imperiled owing to such polluted wretches. Many, too, have
been proved to be defiled as they stood beside a sacrifice, because they prevented
the proper performance of the rites. With me, the opposite has happened in every
case. Not only have fellow-passengers of mine enjoyed the calmest of voyages;
but whenever I have attended a sacrifice, that sacrifice has invariably been suc-
cessful. (On the Murder ofHerodes 82-83)
The Tetralogies resound with the constant refrain, expressed by the prosecution and
defense alike, of the jurors' responsibility to convict and punish the killer. Failure
to do so results in the pollution of the entire city.11 In the First Tetralogy, the pros-
ecution concludes its first speech with the reminder that it is against the public's
interest to allow the polluted murderer to move about freely:
And so you must hold the avenging of the dead a personal duty; you
must punish the defendant himself for his impieties; you must see that
the disaster is his alone and that the city is made pure. (1.11)
In the prosecution's second speech, he expresses the connection between individual
murderer and the whole city quite succinctly:
So with this in mind, help the victim, punish the killer, and cleanse the
city. (III. 11)
All three actions—helping the victim, punishing the killer, and purifying the city—
are described as different aspects of the same process. Exile, the customary method
of punishing a murderer, helps the victim by keeping the killer away from his home,
and it cleanses the city by ridding it of a defiled and potentially dangerous element.
The law demands that a murderer go into exile, and Delphic Apollo and his ora-
cle oversee this punishment. At this point, in some colonial tales, the murderer's
exile overlaps with the start of a colonial expedition: a murderer consults Delphic
Apollo to be purified and is sent into exile; this exile becomes the impetus to found
a colony.12 Before we look at how a murderer in exile represents colonization, I
want to introduce another type of colonial tale which, as we will see, works in much
the same way. This variant describes its founders as political dissidents, forced to
leave home in search of new territory as the losing party in a city's internal conflict
or as victims of a new oppressive regime. The Partheniae, for example, were
denied civic rights at home; they fled Sparta and founded Tarentum in southern
Italy.13 According to Herodotus, the Phocaeans set out on a colonial expedition to
escape being captured by the tyrant Harpagus.14 Menecles of Barca tells us that Bat-
tus founded Cyrene, not because of a drought, as Herodotus says, but as a result of
political upheaval in Thera.15 I want to argue here that with respect to representa-
tions of colonization, in addition to its comparable function within the narrative, the
model of a political exile is structurally similar to that of the murderer who must
flee his country. Plato, in fact, considers those who lead insurrections and stir up
civil strife to be the moral equivalents of murderers—they both commit crimes
against the state.16 What we must remember is that for the Greeks political dissi-
dence is not a purely secular problem; it threatens the state with religious pollution.
Cylon's attempt at tyranny in Athens, for example, was enacted amid religious rit-
ual and festivals, and in the end, the political coup (and ensuing murder) demanded
that Epimenides of Crete purify the city.17 Just as an unpurified murderer poses a
threat to the safety not just of an individual but of the whole city, a city's political
crisis can also bring religious persecution upon it. In each case—murder or politi-
cal stasis—the act of an individual or group of individuals threatens the stability and
health of the city as a whole. As a result, the impious must be expelled for the good
of those who remain. It is the act of exile and the implicit threat to the well-being
of the city if certain citizens are not exiled that are the critical elements in this vari-
ant of the colonial narrative.
Now that we have established the civic nature of Apollo's role as purifier, we
can focus more specifically on our original question—why is it that once new
colonies have been successfully established on foreign land, the Greeks choose to
describe themselves to themselves and to the rest of the established Greek world as
led by murderers or political exiles? How does Apollo the purifier relate to Apollo
the colonizer? Another way of posing the question is to ask what colonization and
purification have in common as cultural systems. Using contemporary anthropolog-
ical evidence to provide a framework for exploring the concepts of pollution and
purification within the Greek world, we will see that there are three different ways
in which purification rituals correspond to colonial activity. Mary Douglas' book,
Purity and Danger, has been instrumental in describing the related phenomena of
pollution and purification, and some of her observations will help us clarify the
essential similarities between purification and colonization in archaic Greece.
First, the concept of purification in the Greek mind, as in many other cultures,
consists of establishing categories and making divisions; a state of pollution occurs
when these categories get confused.18 Douglas argues that defilement is never an
isolated event; it occurs only as part of a systematic ordering of ideas, one which
depends on division. As a result, she warns us that "any piecemeal interpretation of

the pollution rules of another culture is bound to fail. For the only way in which
pollution ideas make sense is in reference to a total structure of thought whose key-
stone, boundaries, margins and internal lines are held in relation by rituals of sepa-
ration."'9 The concept of purification, then, allows a society to regulate the bound-
aries that it has erected between what it considers sacred and profane, clean and
polluted, beneficial and harmful. In Plato's Sophist, the interlocutors, Theaetetus
and the stranger, discuss the art of division or discrimination (5ia<piTiKr)), and they,
too, conclude that the kind of separation or division that "keeps the better and
expels the worse" is called a kind of purification:
Str.: Every such discrimination, as I know it, is called by all a kind of

purification. (Soph. 226d)
Purification is the process of making divisions, and as we have seen, one way to
purify a city entails the separation and expulsion of the negative element for the
good of the whole citizen body.20 Similarly, mounting a colonial expedition
involves choosing those citizens who will participate and those who will remain
behind—another kind of division. And furthermore, the very process of establish-
ing a new city on foreign territory depends upon acts of separation. The founder
must divide the land itself into different civic components—he must determine that
the proper boundaries between these components are distinguished and observed—
boundaries between the sacred and profane, between individual members of the
colony, and between the Greek inhabitants and their neighbors.
Second, the process of purification unites individuals into groups; it provides
those who have been expelled with the opportunity for a fresh start, and in this
respect, it has something in common with initiation rituals and rites of passage—
both deal with issues of classification, boundary, and transition.21 As in rites of pas-
sage, a group of colonists is identified that must be expelled from society; its mem-
bers must cross boundaries, and thus they become dangerous or polluted in the eyes
of society. For example, those who were sent to colonize Cyrene were young men
chosen from individual households in Thera. They were not allowed to return home
when their first foundation attempt failed; instead, those who had stayed behind
cursed the young men and pelted them with rocks, refusing to let them land.22 The
colony, however, once successful, provided the Theraeans at home with relief from
drought and the colonists themselves with a new identity as settlers of Cyrene.23
Purification, then, a process of division, provides the mechanism whereby in initia-
tion rituals, the isolated group is first expelled and then reintegrated at a new level
into its original society, or, as in the case of colonization, the colonists are exiled
from one city and reincorporated into Greek society as citizens of a new civic enter-
prise.
And finally, the transition from pollution to purification corresponds to the
transformation of chaos and confusion into a state of order. Eliminating the dirt
reorganizes the environment; it is a positive, creative act. In the same way, found-
ing a colony creates a new civic entity out of the troubles and trauma of the mother
city. A colonial legend records the natural imbalance that provoked the colonial
expedition in order to highlight the order which is restored, both at home and
abroad, precisely by the foundation of a new city.24 As in the case of Cyrene or
Tarentum, the motivation to colonize often comes from natural or political disaster.
Drought or internal stasis forces a city to expel part of its population thereby
reordering the cosmic and civic environment and, in addition, creating a new city
out of that which had to be discarded.
Rituals of purification, then, provide the Greeks with a conceptual model with
which to describe colonization in terms of the expulsion of part of its population, its
galvanization of individuals into a unified group, and its creative role in founding a
new city. A city's need to colonize appears to be very much like its need to be
purified. Plato, in fact, in the Laws, draws together the concepts of pollution, politi-
cal stasis, and colonization in a way that shows how Apollo's strong link to Greek
purification practices informs representations of colonial foundations. He discusses
political dissidents and measures to prevent revolutionary action. For Plato, colo-
nization is the polite name for political exile:
People who, because they lack the means of sustenance, show them-
selves ready to follow their leaders in an attack of the have-nots upon
the haves, [these people] he [the legislator] sends abroad as a measure
of relief, just as in the case of a deep-seated disease of the city, giving it
the euphemistic name of colonization. (735e-736a)
Plato provides us with valuable commentary on the choice of metaphor—the Greek
way of representing the colonization movement, and we have reason to believe that
the connection between the need to colonize and the demand for purification is not
just a fiction of Plato's philosophical system. Plato characterizes the impetus for
colonization and purification in the same terms—as an exercise in division. The
negative element, a political dissident or murderer, is separated from the rest,
purified, and given a fresh start. This is not to say that the Greeks cynically manip-
ulated their religious traditions to justify sending large numbers of their own people
overseas to solve economic or political problems. Rather, as we saw earlier, in the
archaic period religious ideology is firmly embedded in a political and historical
context, and modern distinctions between the sacred and the secular are both irrele-
vant and misleading.25
We can now begin to see how the metaphor of purification, in addition to help-
ing the Greeks conceptualize colonization, influences the very shape of individual
colonial tales. In a kind of narrative metonymy, the purification of an individual
becomes a model for that of the city. A murderer consults Delphic Apollo to be
purified and is sent out to found a colony. The tales of purification for murder by
exile, as well as those concerning political dissidents, intersect with the colonial
narrative, and the point of contact, the common ground, is Delphic Apollo. The
Apollo who purifies becomes the Apollo who colonizes.
Let us turn now to this specific variant of the colonial narrative. First, some
additional examples: Pausanias relates a story about murder and the founding of a
city in the territory of Megara. In Argos, during the reign of Crotopus, Psamathe,
his daughter, gave birth to a son of Apollo's which, fearing her father's anger, she
exposed. The child was killed by Crotopus' dogs, and Apollo sent Poine, the per-
sonification of vengeance, to punish the Argives. A man named Coroebus killed
Poine, but a second plague tormented the Argives. Consequently, Coroebus, of his
own accord, went to Delphi to be punished for killing Poine. The Pythia would not
allow him to return to Argos, but told him to take up a tripod, leave the sanctuary,
and wherever the tripod fell from his hands, build a temple to Apollo and live there
himself. At Mt. Gerania, the tripod slipped, and Coroebus lived there in a village
called Tripodisci, or Little Tripods.26 Thucydides tells us that Alcmaeon, son of
Amphiaraus, wandered for a long time after killing his mother and eventually
founded Acarnania on the advice of the Delphic oracle.27 Apollonius of Rhodes
plays upon this collocation of exile for murder and colonization in the Argonautica.
When Heracles grows tired of their lengthy stay on the island of Lemnos, he asks
Jason in frustration, "Are we exiled for manslaughter?"28
These particular colonial tales are also influenced, at least in part, by another,
very similar narrative pattern common to Greek mythology and literature in which a
murderer flees the wrath of his victim's relatives and goes into permanent exile. As
we mentioned earlier, several examples of this pattern appear in the Homeric poems
alone. In the Iliad, Tlepolemus killed his uncle, left Argos, and settled the island of
Rhodes (//. 2.661-69); Patroclus killed a young boy in anger over a game of
knuckle-bones and fled with his father to the house of Peleus (//. 23.84—90). In the
Odyssey, Theoclymenus fled from home and seeks purification and sanctuary from
Telemachus after killing a relative (Od. 15. 272-78). In Euripides' Orestes, Orestes
must go into exile after killing his mother (1643^-5), and the Medea closes with the
heroine's flight from Corinth to Athens after the murder of Creon's daughter and
her own children.
I would like to suggest that the metaphor of purification for colonization
together with this established narrative pattern of murderer-in-exile combine to
influence the specific colonial narrative pattern of murderer-turned-founder. Once
this particular pattern takes hold, then, it can shape the way the events themselves
are represented and subsequently remembered. We saw an example of this reshap-
ing process in the divergent accounts of the founding of Syracuse as recorded by
Thucydides and Plutarch. Thucydides describes a colonization expedition led by
Archias of Corinth to Syracuse that expelled the native Sicels, while the tradition
that Plutarch records omits the Sicels and instead represents Archias as a murderer
sent into exile. We should now explore why accounts such as Plutarch's version of
Archias and Syracuse come to be told.29 What is at stake?
Colonial tales such as these focus on the founder as murderer; in addition to par-
ticipating in the purification analogy, this particular narrative strategy addresses two
further aspects of the colonial process. First, commemorating a founding hero as a
source of pollution and impurity contains within it the potential for annexing great
power. To understand this apparent contradiction, we must realize that in Greek
thought, the concepts of purity and impurity are not mutually exclusive. In fact, the
essential connection between the two phenomena is reflected in the etymological
association between the Greek words, ayoc;, traditionally translated as pollution or
defilement, and ayvoq/ayioc;, holy or pure. The linguists Pierre Chantraine and
Olivier Masson have shown that these terms are not diametrically opposed; they
both refer to the forbidden aspect of the sacred.30 The difference stems from the
fact that the adjective ayvoc; refers to that element of the divine that separates men
from gods; it presupposes a barrier that must not be crossed. The term ayoc;, then,
designates the consequences of that same sacred power when, once the barrier has
been crossed, it captures man and delivers him to the divine.
The Greeks conceptualize defilement as the inversion of a positive religious
value; but it still carries religious force. Although blood and dust can bring pollu-
tion, they can also consecrate. That which is a source of pollution in one context
becomes a source of religious power in another. Teiresias, for example, sees what
is forbidden, Pallas Athena bathing; he has crossed the barrier between the human
and the divine, and he must be punished. The punishment of blinding, however,
contains within it aspects of the sacred, and he gains the power of prophecy.31
Oedipus, murderer and committer of incest, the source of plague and disaster at
Thebes, once exiled, carries a positive religious power to the land that accepts him,
Athens. Mary Douglas, in her discussion of the African Lele culture, provides us
with an interesting parallel; she describes the cult of the pangolin as one which, in a
similar way, combines opposites as a source of power for good. The animal itself, a
scaly anteater, is a complex of ambiguities:
Its being contradicts all the most obvious animal categories. It is scaly like a fish,
but it climbs trees. It is more like an egg-laying lizard than a mammal, yet it suck-
les its young. And most significant of all, unlike other small mammals its young
are born singly. Instead of running away or attacking, it curls in a modest ball and
waits for the hunter to pass.32
On the one hand, the pangolin transgresses most boundaries of animal categories so
that normally it is considered taboo; on the other hand, its positive power is released
in its dying. The pangolin is ritualized as a source of fertility; it is eaten in solemn
ceremony by its initiates, who are thereby enabled to minister fertility to their kind.
Not unlike the murderer in Greece who has transgressed sacred boundaries, this cat-
egory-breaking animal provides a positive source of power to the Lele.33
Recognizing that, in the Greek system, pollution is inextricably linked to the
sacred makes it easier to understand how individuals can be sources both of
defilement and of sacred power. Apollo himself personifies this ambiguity; he
purifies murderers precisely because he himself has killed and undergone
purification. Fragments of the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women refer to a myth in
which Zeus kills Asclepius, Apollo's son, because he was jealous of Asclepius' suc-
cess as a healer. Apollo, in revenge, kills the Cyclopes and is forced to serve as a
herdsman to Admetus for a year.34 Pausanias tells us that Apollo had to go either to
Tempe or to Crete to be purified after killing the Python at Delphi.35 Both these
myths portray Apollo as a murderer, and although his were justifiable killings, he
must seek purification. There is a presence in this god of two opposed qualities that
are ultimately felt to be complementary.36
This interrelationship between the defiled and the sacred, a relationship that is
personified in Phoebus Apollo, is quite useful to colonial discourse. By describing
their origins as polluted and defiled, as murderers or political exiles, within the
structure of the foundation tale, the colonists assume a new, positive, and sacred
value as founders of a new city.37 Following Mary Douglas' lead in viewing the
system as a whole, it is critical that we consider the figure of the colonist-murderer
not as an isolated phenomenon, only as a source of pollution, but as part of a reli-
gious system that channels the religious power inherent in the defiled into a posi-
tive, consecrating force.38
Second, the narrative motif of founder as murderer addresses another important,
and often overlooked, aspect of archaic Greek colonization: founding a colony
overseas can be as dangerous and as violent as war. Thucydides, in fact, in Nicias'
speech to the Athenians prior to the Sicilian expedition, inverts that metaphor; he
describes the proposed all-out military enterprise against Sicily in terms of coloniz-
ing foreign territory—each means a dangerous confrontation with hostile peoples
and requires a large demonstration of force:
We must consider [that we are like] those going to settle a city among
foreign and enemy peoples for whom it is necessary, on the very first
day which they land, straightaway to conquer the land or know that if
they fail, they will encounter complete hostility. (6.23)
The Greeks often settled territory previously occupied by native populations, and
Thucydides shows us how dangerous and violent those confrontations could be.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus also mentions the violence entailed in founding new
cities. In his account of Artimedes' colonization of Rhegium, Dionysius remarks
that the oikist solved the oracle which authorized his settlement, and "accordingly,
he drove out the barbarians who were in possession of the place and colonized it
himself."39 Two poets, contemporaries of the archaic colonization movement, also
mention confrontations between the Greek colonists and local populations. Mim-
nermus, in a fragment from the Nanno, describes the violence of the settlement of
Colophon and the hybris of the colonists:
When we left the lofty city of Neleian Pylos, we came by ship to the
pleasant land of Asia; and possessing overwhelming violence, we set-
tled at lovely Colophon, leaders full of terrible hybris. From there, we
set forth from the Asteis river and by the will of the gods took Aeolian
Smyrna. (Strab. 14.1.4)40
Archilochus, as we remember, recalls the hostility between Greeks and Thracians as

Paros colonized the island of Thasos, and Thucydides, in his introduction to the
account of the Sicilian expedition, also mentions that local Sicilian tribes were
expelled to make room for the Greek colonists.41 Archeological evidence confirms
the reports of Thucydides and the contemporary poets; it shows precolonial native
cultures at sites such as Syracuse or Locri, and these natives cease to occupy the site
shortly after or at the time of colonization. T. J. Dunbabin argues that although the
first contacts between Greeks and local populations were probably in part peaceful,
when it came to official colonial expeditions, the Greeks preferred "the sword to
peaceful penetration."42
When it comes to the literary traditions that record the archaic colonization
movement, with the few exceptions mentioned above, very little explicit attention is
paid to the violent, warlike confrontations that must have taken place between the
Greek colonists and the native peoples. As we have noted, Greek sources for
archaic colonization strategically focus on the metropolis and the leader of the
expedition; they are far less informative when it comes to the details of the col-
onists' destination. As a result, indigenous populations rarely appear in Greek colo-
nial tales. Traces of their presence, however, particularly of their confrontation
with the colonists, lurk behind the strategies of colonial discourse. Colonial tales
that include murder displace the warlike violence of the colonial expedition itself
and relocate it within the tale by virtue of a religious system which can address and
expiate that violence. Within colonial discourse, the murderous founder is made to
shoulder the burden of the historical violence of settling foreign territory, and his
purification as the story unfolds prefigures that of the colonists themselves.
The archaic period was a time of great and rapid change in Greece. As cities
faced the challenges of overpopulation, land shortage, economic developments, and
political conflicts, overseas colonization proved to be a productive and very suc-
cessful solution. Whatever the reasons were for consulting the Delphic oracle
before founding a colony in the archaic period, the religious symbolism contained
within Apollo's role as purification deity is equally important in conceptualizing
and describing that process. The Greeks considered colonization to be a kind of
purification; their foundation stories consciously record and proudly display their
polluted and murderous origins. In reading these accounts of individual city founda-
tions, we need to be aware of the many kinds of influences—political, historical,
economic, religious, literary—which can shape the form of the colonial (and other
kinds of) narrative. In this discussion of the representation of the founder as a mur-
derer within colonial discourse, I have tried to tease out one such influence, but this
is not the only possibility, and in the following two chapters we will explore alter-
native metaphors for describing colonization.
Notes
1. The god mentioned in this account is undoubtedly Delphic Apollo.

2. Ruiperez 1953 shows that the title Phoebus is a nomen agentis derived from cpoi(36<;,
purifier, which comes from a root meaning to illuminate or shine bright. He notes a parallel
relationship in Latin between lux, luceo, and lustrare and suggests that this might reflect
early forms of purification through fire. Cf. Chantraine 1968-80 pp. 1216-17. See also Ver-
snel 1985-86 p. 135: "the word Phoibos is no longer interpreted as 'radiant' but rather as
'cathartic' or 'awful.'" For ancient etymologies along this line, see Plut. Mor. 393c; Macrob.
Sat. 1.17.33; schol. Ap. Rhod. Argon. 2.302.
3. Malkin (1987a pp. 142-^-3) argues that although Callimachus may imply that the
entire process of laying out the new city and apportioning the land is sanctioned or even
directed by Apollo, we must not assume that the Greek colonists regarded their city plan as
divinely ordained. His point is that the primary responsibility for organizing the new city
belongs to the human founder. My point here is that the choice of Apollo as a metaphor is
significant and needs to be explored further. See Lakoff and Turner 1989 p. 215 who argue
that "poetic metaphor, far from being ornamentation, deals with central and indispensable
aspects of our conceptual systems. Through the masterful use of metaphoric processes on
which our conceptual systems are based, poets address the most vital issues in our lives and
help us illuminate those issues, through the extension, composition, and criticism of the basic
metaphoric tools through which we comprehend much of reality."
4. Apollo's prophetic powers and the advisory capacity of the Delphic oracle also help
establish Apollo in the role of ritual purifier. If someone is sick or a plague attacks a region,
the Greeks consistently consult the Delphic oracle as to the cause of the trouble. Cf. Burkert
1985 p. 147 who points out that in responding to pollution a person must discover the action
that brought about the miasma. "This, of course, requires superhuman knowledge: the god
of purifications must also be an oracle god." See the collections of Delphic responses col-
lected by Parke and Wormell 1956 vol. 2 and Fontenrose 1978 for examples of consultations
about plague.
5. Although, as Parker (1983) points out, Apollo has no cultic association with murder
pollution (this is Zeus' territory), in myth and legend, it is customary to consult Delphic
Apollo to be purified for murder and to be sent into exile. See Parker's Appendix 7 for a list
of examples of the exile and purification motif pertaining to the killer in Greek myth, pp.
365-92.
6. Cf. Gagarin 1981 p. 10; he includes a list of all the homicides in the epic poems on pp.
6-40.
7. IG I2 115 (I3 104) 10-12. Cf. Stroud 1968 for the text, translation, and analysis of
Draco's law on homicide.
8. See MacDowell 1963 pp. 110-29 for the penalties for homicide. The general rules
seem to be that a man found guilty of intentional homicide could be punished by death unless
he chooses to go into permanent exile (with loss of property) before he is found guilty. A
man found guilty of unintentional homicide is sent into exile (with property) until one of the
relatives of the deceased pardons him; his return must be accompanied by specific rituals of
sacrifice and cleansing (Dem. 23.72).
9. Cf. Dem. 23.72 (exile route); 23.44 (if he returns, he can be killed).
10. Third Tetralogy 1.3.
11. Myth portrays the city of Thebes suffering a crippling plague because Laius' mur-
derer has not been caught.
12. It comes as no surprise that most "colonial" murders are involuntary or at least
justified (e.g., Orestes) since this fits well with the general pattern of reluctance that marks
colonial discourse.
13. Strab. 6.3.3. Ephorus tells us that the Lacedaemonians were at war with the Messe-
nians and swore not to return home until they had destroyed Messene or were all killed. In
the tenth year of the war, however, their wives were angry at being abandoned to widowhood
and complained that their country was in danger of lacking men. Their husbands then agreed
to send the youngest men back home to cohabit with the unmarried women there. The chil-
dren born of these unions were called the Partheniae.
14. Hdt. 1.164-68.
15. MeneclesofBarcaFGrH27QF6.
16. Plato Laws 856b.
17. For accounts of the Cylonian conspiracy, see Thuc. 1.126; Hdt. 5.71; for Epi-
menides' purification of Athens, see Arist. Ath. Pol. 1; Plut. Sol, 12. Cf. Connor 1987a for a
more general discussion of how arbitrary the distinctions are that we make on behalf of the
Athenians between religious and secular events.
18. Cf. Vernant 1988 pp. 131-32: "A 'besmirchment' seems to indicate some contact
that is contrary to a certain order of the world in that it establishes communication between
things that ought to remain quite distinct from each other."
19. Douglas 1966 p. 41.
20. Cf. Parker 1983 pp. 18-31 on purification as a "science of division."
21. On rites of passage in general, see Van Gennep 1960. See Parker 1983 pp. 22-23 for
discussion of how purification unites individuals into groups. On the similarities between ini-
tiation rites and purification rituals in cases of murder, see Burkert 1985 pp. 81-82: "A
purification of this kind is clearly in essence a rite de passage. The murderer has set himself
outside the community, and his reincorporation at a new level is therefore an act of initiation."
22. Hdt. 4.156.
23. Apollo has associations with the Athenian initiation of ephebes, and this connection
has been brought to bear on his role as colonizer, for colonists are often young men crossing
the threshold into manhood. Cf. Burkert 1985; Harrison 1927 pp. 439-^14; Versnel 1985-86
pp. 143-45. De Polignac 1984 pp. 66-74 is also relevant here; he discusses initiation rites as
integrative models in the birth of cities.
24. Cf. Vidal-Naquet 1986 p. 206. Talking about myths of origin, he says that "each city
pictured for itself the transition 'in the beginning' from chaos to order and from Nature to
Culture. The legendary tradition incorporates mythical elements but is felt and described as
historical."
25. See Morris 1993 for further discussion of what he calls "the propagandistic fallacy."
26. Paus. 1.43.7. The story has obvious parallels with the ver sacrum legends (cf. Heur-
gon 1957); instead of following an animal, Coroebus carries a tripod. But the tripod marks
the location of the new city and gives it its name. Pausanias goes on to say that Coroebus
is buried in the agora of Megara (as is customary for city founders; Tripodisci is a village
of Megara) and that the story of Psamathe and Coroebus is carved on his stele in elegiacs.
There is also a visual representation of Coroebus killing Poine. Pausanias observes that
these are the oldest stone images that he is aware of seeing. See Anth. Pal. 7.154 for the
epigram.
27. Thuc. 2.102.5-6.
28. Ap. Rhod. Arg. 1.860. Other examples of murderers as city founders include: Aeto-
lia: Apoll. 1.7.6; Athamantia: Apoll. 1.9.2; Argos Oresticum: Strab. 7.7.8; Magnesia: Parth.
Amat. Narr. 5; Lipara: Diod. 4.67.4; Mycenae: Paus. 2.16.3; Rhodes: Horn. //. 2.653-70,
Pind. Ol. 7; Strab. 14.2.6; Zeleia: schol. to Horn. //. 4.88.
29. It may be objected that this particular colonial motif is merely a Hellenistic inven-
tion, but as I will demonstrate in Chapter 7, the story of Tlepolemus, murderer and founder of
Rhodes, which first appears in the Iliad and which is later taken up by Pindar in Olympian 1,
perfectly fits this model. As a general principle for scholars working on the archaic period,
we must remember that the lateness of a source does not necessarily determine the antiquity
(or lack thereof) of the account it records.
30. Chantraine and Masson 1954. Moulinier 1952 p. 296 had rejected this etymological
connection and made a distinction between the two groups of words, but see Vernant 1988
135-37 who dismisses Moulinier in favor of the discoveries of Chantraine and Masson.
31. Vernant 1988 p. 138.
32. Douglas 1966pp. 168-69.
33. Douglas (1966 pp. 169-70) interprets this cult as one of many "which invite their
initiates to turn round and confront the categories on which their whole surrounding culture
has been built up and to recognise them for the fictive, man-made, arbitrary creations that
they are."
34. Euripides makes this legend the starting point for the Alcestis (1-8). Such a legend
may suggest an underlying custom of making a murderer perform some menial service for a
designated time among strangers in order to atone for his offense.
35. Paus. 2.7.7 for Apollo purified in Crete and see Frazer's (1898) note ad loc. The
Tempe tradition seems to be aetiologically connected with the Septerion festival at Delphi,
and the Cretan version may be traced back to a time when the Cretans had a high reputation
as ritual cleansers. In the Homeric Hymn, Apollo's priests come from Crete, and this narra-
tive detail may represent the Cretan introduction of cathartic rites to Greece at Delphi. See
Huxley 1975 pp. 119-24. Similarly, as we have seen, Epimenides comes from Crete to purify
Athens of the Cylonian plague.
36. Cf. Detienne 1986a.
37. An interesting inversion of this colonial tale appears, as Burnett (1988 p. 153) has
argued, in the Lille fragment of Stesichorus where Polyneices, the source of pollution, does
not stay in exile but returns to Thebes and thus brings its destruction with him.
38. We see this same principle at work in Sahlins' (1981) account of Cook's interaction
with the Hawaiians. He argues that the historical event of Cook's arrival was interpreted by
the Hawaiians within the ritual context of the Makahiki festival. A priest analyzing Cook's
death at the hands of the Hawaiians explained that Cook had violated a Hawaiian tabu by
removing wood from a temple. Sahlins shows (p. 26) that this claim is historically inaccu-
rate, but that within the larger mythic context, Cook becomes a taboo transgressor. This
reanalysis is not intended as justification of Cook's murder but rather signifies his present
position as their divine guardian. In other words, Cook gains power and protective status for
the Hawaiians precisely because he transgressed ritual norms.
39. Dion. Hal. exc. 19.2; see also 1.4 where he says that the Partheniae made war upon
the lapygians before founding the city of Tarentum.
40. Cf. Schmid 1947 pp. 13-16.
41. Archilochus Frs. 17, 18, 19, 88, 120 (Tarditi). Cf. Graham 1978 pp. 61-98. Thuc.
6.1-5; cf. Diod. 8.21.3, for an oracle given to Phalanthus, the founder of Tarentum, telling
him to be a "plague to the lapygians." See also the oracle delivered to Neleus, the founder of
Miletus, telling him to "drive out the wicked Carians": NqXeu. cppa^su. oncoc; CX&IKGOV
Kapcov yevoc; avSpcov EâXaoac;. . . (Parke and Wormell 1956 vol. 2 #301, 302).
42. Dunbabin 1948 p. 43: "At least half the Greek colonies were built on sites previ-
ously occupied by native towns, and it is likely that most were. In every case of which we
hear, the Greeks drove out the Sicels or Italians by force."
3
Impossible Sites
Pherecydes gives us the story of the name of Teos. Athamas was walking along
and found his daughter playing and piling up the stone that now exists in Teos.
He asked her what she was doing and she said: TE'OOC; ou e(r|TEi<; Yvoc noAiv
KTIOQC;, eupov. While you were looking for a city to found, I found one.
(Pherecydes FGrH 3 F102)
The potential colonist, forced to leave home, consults Delphic Apollo to learn
which foreign lands he should settle. Thus, the Delphic consultation, located mid-
way between the mother city and the new world, occupies the transitional point in
the colonization narrative—the pivot from civic crisis to civic foundation—and the
oracles themselves play an important role in colonial discourse.1 In the previous
chapter, we saw how crisis as the first stage of the colonial narrative both shapes
and is shaped by a cultural metaphor that describes overseas settlement as a kind of
civic purification. Now, as the narrative moves toward Delphi, the oracles that form
part of colonial discourse themselves influence Greek memories of archaic colo-
nization, and the act of solving a riddle functions as another metaphor for represent-
ing the colonial experience. Once we consider these foundation oracles not as
simple mirrors of historical reality but as representatives of a coherent system of
cultural meaning, we will see that the ambiguous and enigmatic language typically
associated with the Delphic oracle describes the act of foundation as a process of
interpretation. Oracles within colonization tales exploit the ambiguity of puns to
create a new vision of reality, one that translates local phenomena into the Greek
language just as colonization itself transforms foreign soil into a Greek city. In
addition, colonial oracles often adopt the bipartite structure of riddles to represent
the process of founding a colony overseas in terms of solving a puzzle; the solution,
or colony, reorders an unfamiliar and confused landscape.
Ambiguous and demanding interpretation, Delphic oracles have much in com-
mon with riddles—in fact, oracles and riddles are often equated in Greek myth and
literature. In Aeschylus' Agamemnon, for example, when the chorus cannot under-
stand the mantic frenzy of Cassandra, who is possessed by Apollo, they tell her she is
speaking riddles.2 In Plato's Apology, Socrates also characterizes the Delphic oracle
as enigmatic. When the oracle proclaims no man is wiser than he, Socrates replies:
What does the god say? And why is he riddling? (Apol. 21 b)
45
Socrates thus recognizes the oracular response as a riddle that must be solved. He
realizes that Delphic prophecy incorporates a plurality of meanings that demand
thoughtful and critical interpretation. We will see that it is precisely this polyvalent
nature, an affinity for the enigma, that establishes Delphic language as an appropri-
ate context for posing (and solving) the riddles that represent archaic colonization.
Ian Hamnett, in his work on riddles from southern and central Bantu sources,
discusses the social phenomenon of riddling within the broader context of how con-
ceptual categories are established, preserved, and mediated within a given society,
and his work will provide us with a framework in which to consider Greek colonial
riddles embedded in Delphic oracles.3 Hamnett argues that an ambiguous word or
action seems to belong to either one of two or more frames of reference according
to the interpretation brought to it, or it can belong to all at once. The ambiguous
element operates as a point of transition between these different, sometimes oppos-
ing, frames of reference and can mediate between them; as a result, ambiguity
allows contrasting systems of classification to coexist within a single framework.4
On the level of cognition, then, Hamnett suggests that "riddles may be seen as one
way to reconcile two divergent sets of concepts or rules of interpretation."5 Often,
the ambiguous element of a riddle takes the form of a pun or wordplay as in the fol-
lowing riddle, well-known throughout the United States, Canada, and the West
Indies: "What is black and white and red all over?" (a newspaper).6 In fact,
Athenaeus tells us that the oldest type of riddle and the one most true to its nature is
a riddle that includes homonymy.7
A riddle must isolate a culture's categories of classification before it can use
ambiguity to confuse them, and thus the success of a riddle depends upon its ability
to manipulate a given culture's classification system. For this reason, I propose to
approach the riddling oracles associated with archaic Greek colonization on these
terms, as a way to appreciate the points of cultural contact and conflict that emerge
and are addressed by telling colonization tales. The ambiguous, punning element of
colonial riddles does indeed provide a transition between cultural classificatory sys-
tems; it describes the colonization of foreign territory in terms of finding a Greek
name for a local phenomenon.8
Part of the fascination with puns stems from a belief in the natural power or
appropriateness of names, especially proper names, and we will see that Delphic
oracles explain the names of colonies by puns as well. Puns are primarily a game of
etymology, and in the Cratylus, Plato explains the origin and meaning of a variety
of words and names in terms of homonyms. The name of the god Apollo, for exam-
ple, as well as his role as a purifying deity, is etymologized from the Greek verb to
wash or cleanse (Aouw). 9 The puzzle of a pun temporarily obscures the correct
meaning of a word or name, and being able to appreciate the pun depends upon
one's ability to see through it to the word's straight or true meaning.10 As Derek
Attridge has pointed out, in both etymologies and puns, two different but similar
sounding signifiers are made to seem related through the writer's rhetorical skill and
ingenuity.11 This same belief in the power and significance of language led the man
we credit with discovering America to change the spelling of his name. Columbus'
companion, Bartolome de Las Casas, explains:
Impossible Sites 47
This illustrious man, renouncing the name established by custom, chose to be

called Colon . . . because he was moved by the divine will which had elected him
to achieve what his surname and given name signified. . . . This is why he was
called Cristobal, which is to say Christum Ferens, which means the bearer of
Christ. . . . His surname was Colon, which means repopulator, a name befitting
the man whose enterprise brought about the discovery of these peoples. . . . 12
Etymological theorizing such as this assumes connections between signifiers solely
on the basis of a similarity in sound and is known as "folk" or "popular" etymol-
ogy.13 There is no real linguistic evidence, for example, that the name of the Sicil-
ian colony Gela is linked to the Greek verb ysAaw "to laugh." In fact, Thucydides
tells us that the colony's name was borrowed from the indigenous name of a
nearby river.14 Another foundation tradition, however, explains that two brothers,
Antiphemus and Lacius, consulted the Delphic oracle, and in response, Lacius was
told to sail to the sunrise. At this, Antiphemus laughed, and he was told to found a
city where the sun sets and call it Gela.15 The colonization oracle is obviously
intended to create a narrative scenario that provides a Greek explanation for the
local place-name.
Pierre Guiraud discusses this type of folk etymology and dubs it "ethymologia"
or "retro-motivation." He explains that "Ethymology is content to establish a con-
nection between two names and then to invent, to discover, a situation which
justifies it. Thus, one could derive the name of Rome from the Greek rome force,
an etymology which justifies the power of the realm; another ethymology sees in
Rome an anagram for the word Amor."16 Guiraud suggests that under normal cir-
cumstances, an object precedes its name, and the choice of name reflects or is moti-
vated by the nature of the object to be named. A man who sings, for example, is
called a singer; something that opens cans is called a can opener. But we will see
that in the case of some colonization oracles, this order is obviously reversed; the
name comes first, and the story is invented after the fact to explain it. The great
advantage of this "retro-motivation" is the ability to control the story, to create real-
ity instead of merely recording it.17
Let us now look at some additional examples of "retro-motivation" operating
through puns in colonization oracles. As in the case of Gela, the colonial oracle
often includes a bilingual pun that serves as the transition or link between two lan-
guages, two cultures. The colonial tradition of Aegae in Macedonia recounts an ora-
cle that describes the site of the future colony as follows:
Consider, noble Caranus, and place my words in your mind. Leaving

Argos and Greece of beautiful women, go to the springs of Haliacmon,
and where first you see goats grazing, there you, enviable, and all your
offspring should dwell. (Schol. ad Clem. Al. Protr. 2. II) 1 8
The oracle both describes in specific geographical detail the place where the
colonists will live and at the same time explains the name of the city, Aegae, by
deriving it from the Greek word for goats (alyac;).19
We find another bilingual pun in the founding tradition of Thurii. According to
Diodorus, Apollo tells the colonists to found a city in that place where they will live
"drinking water in measure, eating bread without measure" ((JETpco uSwp rrivov-
TEC;, apETpi 8s |ja£av E&OVTEC;). Diodorus tells us that the foundation oracle
remains unclear until the colonists arrive at a spring which the natives call Medim-
nos; the Greek word, fj£Si|jvoc;, however, means a unit of measure for grain, and so
the solution of the riddle, and consequently the foundation of the colony, depends
on discovering a Greek interpretation for a local name.20
Through the wordplay characteristic of the Delphic oracle, colonial tales can be
creative with language; they can motivate the essential connections between name
and place and endow local objects with Greek values. Not only is Gela the local
name of the stream beside which the colony was established, but the name also
means laughter in Greek. Battus may be a local Cyrenean term for king, but
according to the Delphic oracle that prompted the Theraean colonization of Cyrene,
it also refers to the name of the stuttering leader of that colony.21 By incorporating
the ambiguous nature of puns through the language of the Delphic oracle, colonial
tales can retain both local and Greek meanings, but they privilege the Greek value,
for it is the knowledge of Greek that solves the puzzle and founds the colony.
Now, let us consider the entire riddling oracle, not just its punning component,
and we will see that the bipartite structure, the question and the answer, is also a
useful rhetorical framework for colonization tales. In general, the first term of a rid-
dle sets up an unlikely scenario that ultimately, once the riddle is solved, will be
reclassified or interpreted in a more likely fashion. The paradoxical first element,
however, is critical to the essence of the riddle. Aristotle, for example, defines the
most common Greek word for a riddle, a'i'viy pa, in terms of a metaphor:
The essence of a riddle is this: to combine things which are impossibly

true. It is not possible to do this by the arrangement of words, but it
requires the use of metaphor. (Poet. 22.5)22
The principles of a metaphor are the same as those that a riddle uses to express an
apparent paradox—they both compare things that are impossibly true. Archer Taylor,
a folklorist who works on the English tradition of riddles, agrees with Aristotle that a
riddle is essentially an unlikely comparison. Taylor defines a true riddle as follows:
These are descriptions of objects in terms intended to suggest something entirely
different. The Humpty Dumpty riddle, for example, describes an egg as a man
sitting on a wall. Only the queer fact, which is contradictory to the usual nature of
a man, that he cannot be cured or put together again after falling gives notice that
we are not listening to an incident from life; in other words, that we are being
asked to guess a riddle. 23
Impossible Sites 49
Thus riddles, in making unlikely but ultimately accurate comparisons, often present
a paradox or mental puzzle, and the riddles we find in colonial oracles make use of
this technique to describe colonization sites as impossible landscapes. Thucydides,
for example, includes such a paradoxical oracle as part of the story of the founding
of Acarnania:
There is a story about Alcmaeon, son of Amphiaraus. During his wanderings
after the murder of his mother [Eriphyle], the oracle of Apollo is said to have told
him there would be no release from his toils until he found a place which, at the
time he killed his mother, had not been seen by the sun and was not then land
the resst
of the earth was polluted for him. At first he was at a loss, as they say, until he
thought of the deposit of the Achelous river that was not piled up enough at the
time of his mother's death to be called land—for he had been wandering a long
time. He settled the land around Oeniadae, ruled there, and named the place
Acarnania after his son, Acarnan. (2.102.5-6)
One obvious effect of this type of oracle as it appears within a colonial tale is to
highlight the intellectual acumen of the colonists. In order to solve the riddle of his
new city—a place where land is not land—Alcmaeon is forced to make compar-
isons, to look at the world in a new way and to test his interpretive powers.
Sometimes the impossibility of the colonial landscape is resolved through word-
play. Plutarch provides an example within his account of the settlement of the Ozo-
lian Locrians:
Locrus was the son of Physcius, the son of Amphictyon. The son of Locrus and
Cabye was Opus. Locrus quarelled with Opus, and taking many of the citizens
with him, he went to seek an oracle concerning a colony. The god told him to
found a city where he should happen to be bitten by a wooden dog (TOU SE 9eou
cpqoavToc; KTIÊIV rroAiv onounsp av ruxq 5f|x9Ek uno KUVOC; £uA!vqO> and
as he was crossing to the other sea, he stepped upon a dog-briar (Kuvoo(3aTov).
Greatly troubled by the wound, he spent several days there, during which he
became familiar with the country and founded the cities of Physcus and Oeantheia
and the other cities in which the so-called Ozolian Locrians lived. (Mor. 294 e-f)
The puzzle of the wooden dog is thus solved naturally by the dog-briar. The initial
description of the colonial landscape confuses the categories of nature and blurs the
customary distinctions between plant and animal life. The ambiguous element,
then, the dog-briar, partakes of both the plant and animal spheres, and its
identification thereby restores the proper categories.
One of the various traditions surrounding the foundation of Tarentum by Pha-
lanthus and the Partheniae contains a puzzling oracle that also uses a metaphor to
describe an impossible landscape. When Phalanthus asks the Pythia if they can set-
tle Siconia, she says no. Instead she commands:
Look to Satyrion and the gleaming water of Taras, a harbor on the left,
and the place where a goat loves salt water, wetting the tip of his grey
beard. There build Tarentum, mounted upon the Satyrion. (Diod.
8.21.3)
The practically impossible, namely a goat that loves salt water, becomes possible
when we recognize that, in this instance, Tpdyoc; does not mean a goat, but func-
tions as a metaphor for the wild fig tree whose silvery branches dip into the
stream.24 The metaphor, which again confuses the customary distinctions between
flora and fauna, is reinforced by the description of the tree and its branches in terms
of a goat with a grey beard.
Within this context of impossible yet true landscapes, we find the majority of
our enigmatic colonial oracles. In this respect, an oracle that describes the colonial
site as a place where "there is land which was not land" or where "a man is bitten by
a wooden dog" has much in common with the poetic device, the adunaton.25 In
poetry, adunata have a strong proverbial flavor and are generally used to convey a
sense of impossibility. As E. Dutoit defines it, "the poet, in order to represent one
fact or action as impossible, absurd, or unbelievable, associates it with one or more
natural impossibilities."26
The critical difference, however, between the customary use of adunata in liter-
ature and their presence in colonial oracles is exactly this emphasis on the impossi-
ble. For while the oracle that tells Podalirus to found a town where "if the heavens
fall down, he will not feel it" appears to signify a geographical impossibility; never-
theless, such a place does exist. Podalirus founds the city in the Carian Chersonese
when he discovers a site surrounded by high hills.27 Consequently, in colonial ora-
cles, the use of adunata emphasizes the apparent, but not real, impossibility of
founding a colony, and the genuine focus is on the colonists' ability to decipher the
riddle. They have been able to recognize one thing when it has been described as
another and thus unite what was impossible yet true. It is worth noting that whereas
the majority of ambiguous oracles in Greek literature are only correctly understood
in retrospect, colonial oracles as a rule are presented as successfully interpreted in
time to be useful—yet another sign of Apollo's support for the colonial enterprise.
The geographical site of the colony, as we have seen, is often described in
impossible terms as the first half of the riddle; the colonial oracle describes the new
world as a place where the laws of the universe have been overturned. This type of
oracle allows the colonial tale to emphasize the foreignness of the land prior to
Greek settlement. Let us consider one more example of this type of colonial oracle,
however, in order to focus on how the two-part structure of riddling oracles, the
problem and the solution, provides the ideal rhetorical context for representations
of colonial foundations. The Megarians who eventually found the colony of Byzan-
tium first consult Delphi and receive the following reply from the Pythia:
Impossible Sites 51
Blessed are they who will dwell in that sacred city at the Thracian cape
by the narrow mouth of the Pontus. Where two whelps lap at the hoary
sea and where fish and deer graze at the very same pasture. (Hesych.
F6W/390F1.3)28
At first glance it appears that the Pythia has sent the colonists to a place that cannot
exist in the world as they know it, for it is contrary to the rules of nature for dogs to
drink salt water or for deer and fish to share a common diet. This is a place of
chaos, of mixed-up categories. But the solution to the riddle rights the confusion,
reclassifies the categories of nature, and properly redistributes the customary habits
of mammals and marine life. Once the colonists decipher the code and realize that
the bay near their site is called Ceras (the Greek word for a horned animal such as a
deer) and that the site is marked by two rivers, Cydarus and Barbyses (whose names
suggest small dogs), the riddle is solved and the proper order of the natural world is
restored. And, most important, the implications of the particular solution to the rid-
dle reinforce the Greek way of looking at the world. The puzzle is solved by word-
play that attributes Greek significance to important local elements of a particular
colonial tradition, here geographical details. The solution of the riddling oracle
both highlights the interpretive skill of the Greek colonists and supports the values
of their Hellenic culture, all the while celebrating their right to a particular plot of
land.
Thus, on the level of representation, the structure of riddling oracles (especially
those with bilingual wordplay) mimics the act of colonization itself, for the solution
to the riddle replaces local phenomena with a Greek presence. Now turning to the
issue of context, we will see that the "life and death" context associated with neck
riddles is also relevant to representations of the archaic colonization movement.
Taylor identifies the neck riddle as follows: by setting an insolvable puzzle, the
poser, condemned to death, hopes to save his neck.29 In fact, in many traditions,
ancient and modern, riddling takes place as part of a contest. Athenaeus explains
that "a riddle is a playful problem, requiring that the answer be found by intellectual
questioning for the sake of a prize or a penalty." Athenaeus even provides us with
the penalty for someone who at a drinking party fails to solve a riddle. He would be
forced to drink, without stopping, salt water mixed in with his wine.30
But the stakes can get much higher. In the "Contest between Homer and Hes-
iod," Homer's failure to solve the following riddle results in his death. Some boys
who had been fishing tell Homer that "all that we caught, we left behind, and we
carry away all that we did not catch." They are referring to lice.31 Sophocles, how-
ever, preserves perhaps the best example in Greek literature of this "neck riddle"
context with the riddle of the Sphinx in the Oedipus Tyrannus. Here Oedipus' life,
as well as that of the Sphinx, depends upon his ability to divine what walks on four
legs at dawn, two at noon, and three in the evening. By discovering that it is a man,
Oedipus saves himself from the fatal consequences of those who had met the
Sphinx before him and failed to solve the riddle.32
We should consider the enigmatic oracles that occur so frequently in colonial
tales within this agonistic context, for often the physical risks involved in coloniza-
tion do in fact make it a life and death proposition for the colonists. As we have
seen, the situation in the mother city that prompts colonial expeditions is often itself
life-threatening—plague, drought, civil war, overpopulation—and it is the act of
colonization that provides the necessary population relief to enable the mother city
to survive the crisis. As a result, in at least two cases, when colonial expeditions
run into trouble, and the colonists try to return, they are not welcomed back by
those at home. We have already remarked that when Thera founded Cyrene, for
example, the colonists were not allowed back home after a failed first attempt.
Plutarch records a similar story about the colonists of Methone. He says that Eretri-
ans used to inhabit Corcyra, but they were defeated by the Corinthians. When the
Eretrians tried to return home, they were not welcomed by their fellow citizens,
who showered them with missiles from slings. So they settled a territory in Thrace
and called the city Methone, after an ancestor of Orpheus. But their neighbors
called them "men repulsed by slings" (6moacp£v86vr|Toi).33
The stakes were high for colonists of the archaic period. As Thucydides tells us,
an overseas military enterprise like the Sicilian expedition has much in common
with a colonial venture. In each case, the Greeks have only one day to establish
their authority on foreign land or they will face constant danger from the native peo-
ples.34 The dangers of overseas travel and potential conflicts with native popula-
tions, together with drought, famine, or civil war at home, combine to present the
colonist with very few viable alternatives to founding a colony. "Solve the riddle or
die" is a broader motif, common in folklore and myth, and once we perceive how
relevant this mythic context is to colonial riddles, we gain new insight into Greek
colonial representation.
To return to the riddling oracles themselves, one conclusion to be drawn from
the above examples is that Greek colonial tales place a high value on the process of
interpretation, and this is expressed through the act of posing and solving riddling
oracles. The Greek colonists are thus portrayed as clever, insightful, and percep-
tive; they know the correct names for things.35 The oracle asks a question about one
thing disguised as another, and in order to solve its riddle, the hidden connection
must be uncovered. Andrew Welsh, in a book that approaches riddles as a root
form of lyric poetry, discusses the acquisition of knowledge that is inherent in both
the framing and solving of riddles:
The riddle is more than simply substituting one name for another. To name is to
have known, and to know is to have seen—yet the sense of paradox is present
even in the initial act of seeing and is never completely resolved. It is here, it
seems, that the riddle as a root form of poetic imagery becomes most interesting
to us, for the process of resolving the paradoxes implicit in the imagery becomes a
way of knowing. . . . In having seen, we have created a space for fuller know-
ing. What Aristotle said of metaphor applies as well to the riddle: it engenders
thought by teaching us something (Rhet. iii.l0.1410blO-15).36
The colonial act is thus one of naming. By creating and solving riddles about their
new city, by recognizing the correct names for things in an alien environment,
within the rhetoric of colonial discourse, the colonists are portrayed as knowledge-
able about the true nature of their city and thus justified in founding it. One of the
founding traditions of the Spartan colony of Tarentum, for example, describes the
Impossible Sites 53
successful foundation as a reward for the correct interpretation of the following

puzzling Delphic oracle. Phalanthus is told that he will found a colony "when rain
falls from the clear blue sky (ai'6pa)." After much frustration, the riddle is finally
solved when Phalanthus lays his head in his wife's lap. She consoles her husband
while picking lice from his hair, but she, too, is sad and begins to cry. Phalanthus
then interprets the rain mentioned in the oracle to be the tears falling from his wife's
eyes; her name is Aethra.37
Colonial legends thus emphasize the interpretation that ambiguity demands.
Some oracles describe unlikely animals as guides to the colonial site. According to
Creophylus, for example, those who founded Ephesus asked Delphic Apollo where
to establish their city, and he told them to found a city where "a fish pointed and a
wild boar led the way." According to the story, the mystery of the oracle is solved
while the colonists are cooking lunch beside a stream, as a fish that is baking falls
with some hot ashes onto a quiver and sets a bush on fire. A boar has been hiding
there and becomes frightened; he runs off to a tall mountain called Tracheia and
falls, struck by the colonists with a javelin. The colonists, once they realize that this
sequence of events fulfills the terms of the oracle, found the city of Ephesus on the
spot.38 At first glance, the chances of fish pointing and wild boars leading the way
to the site of a new colony seem improbable, but the colonists correctly interpret the
fireside episode and found the city. Similarly, Athamas, exiled from Boeotia for
killing his children, consults the god about where to live and is told to settle "wher-
ever he is hosted (S,s.v'\aQr\) by wild animals." Athamas travels a long time until he
comes upon wolves devouring a sheep. When they see him, however, they abandon
their prey and flee. He settles there once he realizes that the wolves have left food
for him as hosts would provide a meal for their guests.39
Other colonial oracles include ambiguous reponses which, tradition tells us, the
colonists manipulate in order to trick the occupants out of their land. These
accounts justify Greek claim to the new territory not in physical or military terms
but as a result of their mental prowess. Dionysius of Halicarnassus recounts such an
oracle as part of the colonization legend of the Spartan colony Callipolis:
When Leucippus of Sparta inquired as to where it was fated for him and his fol-
lowers to settle, the god commanded them to sail to Italy and to settle in whatever
land they stay in for a day and a night (nijepav <ai VUKTO) after landing. The
expedition landed near Callipolis, a seaport of the Tarentines, and Leucippus,
pleased with the nature of the place, persuaded the Tarantines to permit them to
encamp there for a day and a night (riêpav <ai VUKTO). When several days had
passed, and the Tarentines asked them to depart, Leucippus paid no attention to
them, claiming that he had received the land from them under a compact for day
and night (r||j£pav <ai VUKTO), and so long as there should be either of these, he
would not give up the land. So the Tarentines, realizing that they had been
tricked, permitted them to remain. (Dion. Hal. exc. xix 3.3)
The founder, Leucippus, takes advantage of the duplicity of the oracle's message to
trick the Tarentines out of their land, for the absence of the definite article in the
Greek expression, qijepav <ai VUKTQ, allows Leucippus to intrepret it to mean
either "a single night and day" or just "night and day," as in forever.40
The language of the Delphic oracle is characteristically enigmatic, and precisely

for this reason—because it demands interpretation—it is a valuable representational
tool for colonial discourse. Delphic Apollo favors symbolic, ambiguous language
for his messages about the future, language that requires reflection, insight, and
intellectual agility in order to be interpreted correctly. Heraclitus perhaps best cap-
tures the essence of Apollo and the Delphic oracle:
The lord whose oracle is at Delphi neither speaks nor hides but
signifies. (DK22B53) 41
In fact, as Charles Kahn suggests, Heraclitus' own circumlocution imitates the
god's characteristic lack of specificity. He does not name Apollo directly but refers
to him obliquely by rank (avaE,), function (or|(jaivEi), and place (EV AsAcpoTc;).42
The god does not deliver his prophecies in direct speech; but neither does he delib-
erately lie or conceal the truth. Instead, Delphic Apollo gives a sign. He predicts
the future indirectly; his oracles demand interpretation.43
J.-P. Vernant has observed that the Greeks consult the Delphic oracle in order to
determine the outcome of future events, their ignorance of which marks them as
mortal and not divine. He emphasizes, however, the fact that the ambiguity of the
responses given by the Delphic oracle replaces their lack of knowledge of the future
not with specific predictions but with a different kind of uncertainty. He concludes
that "the ambiguity of the oracular word reintroduces into mortal time this funda-
mental opacity, this necessarily hazardous character of previews and projects that it
is divination's task to attenuate, if not to abolish."44 The substitution of the ambigu-
ity of the oracular response for the uncertainty of human existence shifts the state of
indeterminacy out of the hands of the gods and into the human world of interpreta-
tion. It gives the Greeks the illusion at least of control over the major events of their
lives if not control itself, and in this respect, we can appreciate how the ambiguous
language and enigmatic structure of Delphic Apollo's oracles can help shape the way
the Greeks conceptualize the phenomenon of colonization. Through the telling of
the colonization story, the Greek colonists gain an element of control over their lives
that they may have lacked as participants in the colonization effort itself. Colonial
tales record ambiguous oracles from Apollo because an explicit answer is less impor-
tant to the story than the process through which the colonists decipher his response.
By describing the colonization site as backwards or upside-down, colonial oracles
exploit the two-step structure of a riddle to represent the act of foundation as an intel-
lectual restoration of the proper order of things. Colonial tales create the abnormal,
inverted image of a colonial site before Greek occupation as a way to underscore the
absence of that inversion once the Greeks take possession.
In the previous chapter, we saw how Delphic Apollo and the cultural metaphor
of purification represent the birth of a Greek colony as the restoration of order
within the narrative context of the colonial tale. Since solving a colonial riddle sim-
ilarly restores intellectual order to a state of categorical confusion, we can now
begin to appreciate how the nature and structure of colonial riddles complement the
Impossible Sites 55
narrative pattern of murderer-in-exile. To see more clearly how this works, let us
look at several of the tales that recount the colonization of Rhegium.
Strabo tells us that Rhegium was founded by citizens of Chalcis who, according
to an oracle, were dedicated, one out of ten, to Apollo because of crop failure.45
Subsequently, they were sent from Delphi to found the colony of Rhegium. In other
words, within the mother city, the harmonious relationship between mankind and
his environment has been temporarily destroyed, and this imbalance prompts the
tithe to Apollo and eventually the colonization expedition to Rhegium. In order for
the proper natural order to be restored in Chalcis, that is, to end the famine, some
members of the city must be expelled. The city must be purified, as Plato says, and
Delphic Apollo oversees this purification. Consequently, the marginal or dangerous
element of one city becomes the founding force of another. The colonists choose to
record the natural imbalance that provoked their colonial efforts in order to high-
light the order that was restored, both at home and abroad, precisely by the founda-
tion of a new city.46
Strabo also preserves another structurally similar account of Rhegium's foun-
dation, which he attributes to the Sicilian historian Antiochus. According to Anti-
ochus, the Zancleans sent for some Chalcidians to participate in their colonization
expedition, appointing Antimnestus as leader. To this expedition were added
Messenian political exiles who, unwilling to be punished for an outrage done to the
maidens at Limnae, had asked the god for help and were told to join the Chalcidians
in settling Rhegium.47 Whereas the first account attributed the colonial expedition
to famine at home, or natural events out of balance, Antiochus' version describes
political unrest as the motivating factor. But whether the disturbance is one of nat-
ural or political origins, the solution is the same. Both colonizing groups must leave
home for Delphi and then found a colony. In doing so, they resolve the confusion at
home and, with the help of Apollo, create a new state of order in the form of a new
city.
As we now turn to the issue of poetics, we see that the enigmatic oracle pre-
served as part of Rhegium's colonial tradition presents linguistically this same two-
step process of confusion followed by a restoration of order. Antimnestus (or
Artimedes) of Chalcis consults Apollo about the destination of the Chalcidians ded-
icated at Delphi. Apollo tells them to settle the following spot:
Where the Apsia, most holy of rivers, falls into the sea, on that spot
where as one approaches, the female weds the male, there found the
city. He gives you the Ausonian land. (Diod. 8.23.2)
The colonial oracle describes the site of the new colony in familiar terms, referring
to the sexual union between male and female, but as a reversal of those terms.48
The colonists are told to found a city in a place where "the female weds the male."
Since in proper, civilized Greek communities, the estabished convention is for the
male to wed the female, this oracle, like many colonial oracles, describes the colo-
nial landscape as an impossible place. But the colonists solve the riddle and rein-
state the proper male-female relationship when they come across a vine (female)
entwined around a fig tree (male). We have seen that colonial tales describe a state
of natural or political confusion in order to highlight the subsequent return to order
as a result of Apollo's purifying intervention. In the same way, the Greeks adopt
the bipartite structure of the riddle common to Delphic language first to express
confusion, and then to reorder the chaos of a female-dominated sexual landscape.
In each case, it is the process of discrimination, of making the proper divisions or
distinctions between categories, that allows the colonists to create order out of
chaos.49
Thus enigmatic colonial oracles mimic on a linguistic level the act of foundation
itself. For in setting up a Greek colony on foreign soil, the founder imposes a
Greek sense of civic order on the site; he defines the proper boundaries of the new
city—boundaries between the sacred and profane, between individual members of
the colony, and between the Greek inhabitants and their neighbors. Distribution
and organization are among the primary duties of the leader of a colonial expe-
dition.50 Once the colonists arrive at their site, each member of the expedition
receives a portion of land, and the leader is the one to distribute those lots. He is
also in charge of building the city walls that delineate its territory and of measur-
ing and marking out the precincts of the gods.51 This civic ordering process, then, is
represented in the colonial tale as the act of solving the colonial riddle. The first
term of the riddle presents a world that is in a state of categorical confusion—
wooden dogs, salt-water goats, land which is not land. Solving the riddle, like
marking out territorial divisions, reestablishes the proper distribution of linguistic
and natural relationships. The colonial tale that includes an enigmatic Delphic ora-
cle helps recreate the colonial experience because it draws attention to the process
of interpretation.
Loxias Apollo, the master of riddling, punning language, influences the literary
representations of a colony's foundation just as he oversees the event itself and thus
provides the Greeks with another colonial metaphor—that of solving a riddle. The
use of bilingual puns within the riddling structure of the oracle imbues local phe-
nomena with Greek meaning. Colonial oracles use homonyms to explain the name
or origin of the colony in a way which, as long as the story is told, continues to rein-
force fundamental Greek values and firmly entrench them in a foreign setting.
Long after the foundation itself, Delphic oracles within colonization tales underline
the centrality of the Greek language and its implicit importance in the continuing
life of the colony. In addition, the process of solving the riddle emphasizes native
Greek intelligence and ingenuity in a foreign context. The enigmatic language of
colonization tales tends to confuse the various relationships of natural order—ani-
mals are described as plants, plants as people. Within the tale, colonists must solve
the riddle, decipher the pun, and learn the correct names for new things before they
can found the colony. Riddles within colonial tales defamiliarize the familiar as a
way to represent Greek occupation of foreign land in terms of intellectual prowess
and the divine authority of Greek Apollo. Colonization tales make the act of foun-
dation mysterious in retrospect; they reorganize the commonplace process of found-
ing a colony and make it temporarily alien. The next step, the correct interpretation
Impossible Sites 57
of the oracle, the recognition of the familiar in the mysterious, reveals an affinity
with the god; it presents the Greek colonists as speakers of the Delphic language;
they are masters of interpretation and, as a result, masters of a new city.
Notes
1. For collections of colonization oracles and discussions of their credibility as historical

sources, see Pease 1917; Parke and Wormell 1956 vol. 1 pp. 49-81; Fontenrose 1978
pp.137_44; Malkin 1987app. 17-91.
2. Aesch.Ag. 1112-13.
3. See Hamnett 1967 pp. 379-92. He suggests (p. 379) "that riddles and riddling may
illuminate some of the principles that underly classification in social action and cognition
generally and can, in particular, indicate the role that ambiguities play in the classificatory
process." See also T. R. Williams 1963 pp. 95-110; Georges and Dundes 1963 pp. 111-18;
Barley 1974 pp. 143-75.
4. Barley 1974 p. 144. He argues that a riddle performs a metalinguistic function in the
discussion of categories: "It is a complicated play on reality and appearance, linking the
unlike, denying conventional similarities, and generally dissolving barriers between classes,
to make us realise that the grid we impose upon the world is far from a perfect fit and not the
only one available. A collection of riddles makes us aware that all the world's a riddle and
all our classifications merely unconfirmed solutions."
5. Hamnett 1967 p. 383. Cf. T. R. Williams 1963 pp. 105-6. He argues that Dusun rid-
dling serves as a conceptualizing mechanism: "The juxtaposition, in riddles, of elements of
the known allows the limits of the unknown to be expanded."
6. Welsh 1978 p. 30; he cites Taylor 1951 p. 680.
7. Ath. 10.453b.
8. Hamnett 1967 p. 388 discusses the following riddle from a tribe in the Lesotho as an
example of how a riddle allows new or alien ideas and institutions to be reclassified in famil-
iar terms. First he quotes the riddle: '"A cow that comes out of the sea, people cut it up and
it does not come to an end, and on Monday they cut it up again—a shop.'" Then he explains
that "here the strange object, the shop, is compared to a cow; the new and foreign kind of
wealth is related to the traditional kind of wealth, viz., cattle. (The reference to cutting it up
again on Monday points to the fact that a shop's supplies are continually replenished.)"
9. Plato Cra. 405b. At Cra. 383 a-b, Socrates conducts a playful debate about natural
versus conventional theories about names. For further examples and discussions of etymo-
logical puns in Greek literature, see McCarthy 1919 pp. 343-58; Fordyce 1932 pp. 44-46;
Kranz 1933 pp. 287-89; Quincey 1963 pp. 142-48.
10. Cf. Fordyce 1932 p. 45; he points out that the adverbs 6p9coq and ETUJJCOC; often are
used to signal an etymological pun. We recall the discussion in the Cratylus about the rela-
tionship between a name and the thing named; the dialogue is subtitled "Concerning the Cor-
rectness of Names" (nep! OVOMOTCOV 6p66Tr|To<;). At 428e, Socrates sums up "Correctness
(opSoTqc;) of a name, we say, is that quality which shows the nature of the thing named."
11. Attridge 1988 p. 108. Culler 1988 p. 2 describes etymological speculation as "the
diachronic version of punning," and in this context quotes a delightful passage (p. 1, too long
to include here) from Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Defence of Punning," which puts forth
several punning etymologies of the word "pun" itself. Ahl 1985 also discusses the interrela-
tion of puns and etymologies in the ancient world.
12. Las Casas Historia 1.2, cited in Todorov 1984 pp. 25-26; in general, see pages
25-28 for a discussion of the significance of names and naming for Columbus.
13. Attridge 1988 p. 112; see also the rest of his discussion on folk etymology pp.
111-17.
14. Thuc. 6.4.3.
15. Steph. Byz. s.v. Ts'Aa; Etym. Magn. 225.1. Cf. Parke and Wormell 1956 vol. 2 p.
166. See also Ar. Ach. 606 for the same pun: TOUC; 5'tv Ka|jcxpivQ <av TeXa <av
KarayeAa.
16. Guiraud 1972 p. 406 (my translation). He distinguishes ethymology from etymol-
ogy by emphasizing that etymology is a sort of genealogy whose function is to establish the
origin of a people or city by giving them an eponymous hero. Ethymology, on the other
hand, is a rhetorical figure which consists of imagining a character, situation, or event that
plays on their names. This, he points out, is the reverse of the normal situation. "It is as if
the name creates the character and the situation, as if Mr. Fox must necessarily be crafty and
Mr. Sheep pusillanimous" (p. 405, my translation).
17. Culler 1988 p. 11 in his introduction to a collection of essays on puns, also remarks
on the way in which puns reveal an active manipulation of language. "Precisely because the
linguistic sign is arbitrary," he argues, "discourse works incessantly, deviously to motivate."
18. See Diod. 7.16 (exc. Vat. p. 3) for another version of this oracle.
19. Although the original etymology of Aegae is unclear, it appears that the Greeks per-
ceived it as foreign and in need of a Greek etymology. On Aegae as an indigenous place
name, see Chantraine 1968-80 pp. 29-30 and 36; Steph. Byz. s.v. Aiyai. The use of animals
to designate the site of a colony is a common theme in founding traditions. See Pease 1917
p. 8; Vian 1963 pp. 77-94.
20. Diod. 12.10.5.
21. Hdt. 4.155. Herodotus provides both translations for the name Battus.
22. Elsewhere (Rh. 3.11.6) Aristotle explains that metaphors can be derived from the
well-constructed riddle. Creating a poetic metaphor by combining different ideas in new
ways differs little from the process of inventing a riddle. For a discussion of the various
Greek terms for a riddle, see Ohlert 1912 pp. 1-22; for the etymological connection between
a'l'viypa and afvoe;, see Nagy 1979 p. 237.
23. Taylor 1951 p. 1; see also pp. 3—4 where Taylor explains his method of
classification: "The fundamental conception underlying the enigmatical comparison deter-
mines the place of the riddle. The main subdivisions or chapters in this collection are
descriptions of (1) something living, (2) an animal, (3) several animals, (4) a person, (5) sev-
eral persons, (6) a place, (7) a thing."
24. Cf. LSI s.v. Tpayoc;: V. Among Messenians = epuveoc; or wild fig. Parke and
Wormell 1956 vol. 2 p.73 take the oracle as a pun on Epitragos, a Greek name for a wild
olive tree. But now see Maurizio 1992 who shows that fig tree is not one of the meanings of
Tpayoc;, but that what we have here is a metaphor of goat for fig tree.
25. For discussions ofadunata, see Dutoit 1936; Rowe 1965 pp. 387-98; Kenner 1970.
26. Dutoit 1936 p. ix (my translation).
27. Apollod. Epit. 6.18: oupavou rreaovTcx; ouScv neioETai. The oracle is obviously
playing upon the phonetic similarities between TTEOOVTOC; and TTEIOETOII.
28. Cf. Steph. Byz. s.v. Byzantium, for a slightly different version. Fontenrose 1978 dis-
cusses this oracle at p. 283.
29. Taylor 1951 p. 1.
30. Ath. 10.448 c-e; cf. 457c and 459 for the penalties for not solving the riddle. Cf.
Ohlert 1912 pp. 22-60.
31. Certamen 326. See also Heraclitus DK 22 B56 and Kahn 1979 pp. 111-12. Cf.
Strab. 14.1.27 for a similar contest between the two seers, Chalcas and Mopsus.
32. There is another riddling contest within the play, this time between Apollo and Oedi-
Impossible Sites 59
pus. Although Oedipus does solve the riddle of the Sphinx, he is not as successful with the
ambiguous Delphic oracle about his parents.
33. Plut. Mor. 293 a-b.
34. Thuc. 6.23.
35. In his discussion of riddles (10.455 f), Athenaeus admits that the ability to solve
some riddles requires specific knowledge. After telling a riddle to his companions, he asks,
"Did you get it?" The Greek for that is jjavGavEic;; more literally, "are you learning?" Cf.
Todorov 1984 pp. 26-28 for the importance that Columbus attached to naming things in his
role as colonizer of the New World.
36. Welsh 1978 p. 32.
37. Paus. 10.10.6-8.
38. Creophylus FGrH 417 Fl = Ath. 8.361 d-e.
39. Apollod. B/W. 1.9.2.
40. Although this episode shows one set of Greeks tricking other Greeks, not native peo-
ples, the result is the same. Intellectual prowess is celebrated, not military dominance. See
Scheid and Svenbro 1985 pp. 328^4-2 for a discussion of a similar trick to gain land. Virgil
(Aen. 1.367-8) alludes to Dido's famous trick to acquire the territory of Byrsa, the site of
Carthage. Servius, in his commentary on the lines, explains the allusion. Dido, on the
authority of Venus, asks the Numidian king Hiarbas to buy as much land as an oxhide would
cover. He agrees, and she proceeds to cut the oxhide into a thin strip that circumscribes an
area of twenty-two stades. Like the Callipolis trick, Dido's ruse rests on the ambiguity of
tenere, which can mean both "cover" and "circumscribe" or "encompass." The account is
relevant to our discussion as well because, as Servius says, the name Byrsa is a pun on the
Greek word gupoa for oxhide. For other examples of trickery to gain land, see Plut. Mor.
293 f-294 c and 296 d-e.
41. For commentary and bibliography, see Kahn 1979 pp. 123-24.
42. Kahn 1979 p. 123. See also Vernant 1991 p. 315. Fontenrose 1978, however,
argues that the Delphic oracle's reputation for ambiguity is a modern one. "It was not a repu-
tation for ambiguity that Delphic Apollo had, but for truth-telling" (p. 238). Nor does he
accept the Heraclitus quotation as evidence for this ambiguous reputation. He argues that the
force of or||joiiv£i is that Apollo indicates his meaning through the Pythia instead of speaking
for himself. In presenting this interpretation, however, Fontenrose ignores the rest of the pas-
sage: "he neither speaks nor hides."
43. See Vernant 1991 p. 314 for the ambiguous nature of Delphic prophecy as a literary
phenomenon. For general studies on the usefulness of ambiguity, see Stanford 1939 and
Empson 1961. For more specific studies on the language and style of Delphic oracles, see
Parke and Wormell 1956 vol. 2 pp. xxi-xxxvi; Fontenrose 1978 pp. 58-87. Roberts 1984
discusses the ambiguity of Delphic Apollo within the specific context of the Oresteia. Many
examples of Delphic oracles that exhibit their characteristic, ambiguous style can be found in
the Histories of Herodotus; cf. Crahay 1956.
44. Vernant 1991 p. 315. For insight into how oracular consultation fits into the daily
life of another, although very different, culture, see Evans-Pritchard 1976 pp. 120-63 on the
poison oracle of the Azande of the Southern Sudan. See also Park 1963.
45. Strab. 6.1.6.
46. Cf. Vidal-Naquet 1986 p. 206. Talking about myths of origin, he says that "each city
pictured for itself the transition 'in the beginning' from chaos to order and from Nature to
Culture. The legendary tradition incorporates mythical elements but is felt and described as
historical."
47. The rape of the Limnaean maidens functions as yet another kind of mixing of cate-
gories in need of purification.
48. Cf. Vidal-Naquet 1986 p. 214.

49. The key word here, in Greek, is Siatcplvoov; this is the word that Plato uses both to
talk about the process of division which constitutes purification (Soph. 226d) and to describe
the process of separating reality (Cra. 388b-c) which is inherent in solving riddles.
50. See Graham 1964 pp. 29-39 for the role of the oikist and Malkin 1987a pp. 135-86:
"Having acquired possession of the site of the colony, the foremost duty of the oikist was to
conduct the organization of its physical space."
51. For accounts of a founder's duties, see Pindar Pyth. 5.89-93; Horn. Od. 6.7-10;
Archil. Fr. 145 Bergk = Ath. 4.167d.
4
The Lay of the Land
For these reasons, it is necessary for them [married couple] to leave their own
houses to their mother and father and the bride's relations as if they were going
off to found a colony, to live visiting and being visited in return, begetting and
rearing children, and so handing on life, like a torch, from one generation to
another, ever respecting the gods according to the laws.
(Plato Laws 776 ab)
In this passage from the Laws, Plato evokes the image of a colonial expedition to
describe the changes in familial relationships that necessarily evolve as a result of
marriage. The married couple, like colonists, must leave home. In spite of the
physical separation, however, religious and cultural bonds remain that link the new
couple with their family just as shared customs and practices keep the cultural ties
strong between a new colony and its mother city—in both cases, the common bonds
of custom and culture will continue to bridge the sea of differences that married
couples and colonists will inevitably confront. The torch, evocative of both house-
hold and civic hearth, plays an important role in the rituals of marriage and colo-
nization. It provides a sense of continuity that extends across time and place, and
Plato highlights the torch as a symbol of cultural identity passed down from one
generation to the next.
The similarities between marriage and colonization, however, transcend the
issues of separation and continuity raised by Plato. Both are institutions of integra-
tion and acculturation, concerned with uniting opposites and transforming that
which is wild and foreign into a fruitful and productive experience. And like all
instruments of civilization, colonization and marriage also embed within their ideol-
ogy the element of violence. Precisely because of this striking overlap between col-
onization and marriage, not only does colonization serve as a metaphor for concep-
tualizing marriage, as Plato suggests, but the rituals and rhetoric of the Greek
marriage ceremony (including rape) shape colonial representation as well.1
Thus far in our discussion of the colonial narrative and of the cultural metaphors
61
that describe colonization, we have focussed on Delphic Apollo and on the issues
inherent in leaving home. The basic narrative pattern of crisis, followed by Delphic
consultation and colonial foundation, is further influenced by preexisting mythic
patterns, such as the murderer-in-exile, and by the poetic conventions typically
associated with the Delphic oracle. Now, as we map out the end of the colonial nar-
rative, the city foundation itself, different issues arise, and new metaphors are called
into play. On one level, accounts of marriage and rape certainly reflect issues of
sexuality and gender roles, but at the same time the theme of sexual violence can be
symbolic of larger cultural and political issues.2 Indeed, within the ideology of col-
onization—of foreign conquest and overseas settlement—the discourse of rape and
the institution of marriage provide models for representing the complicated relation-
ships that Greeks must forge with native populations upon colonizing foreign terri-
tory.
Before exploring why marriage imagery is so important to colonial discourse, I
would like to outline briefly some of the ways in which the institution of marriage
itself functions in Greek thought.3 First, on perhaps its most basic level, marriage
serves an integrating function; it unites two distinctly different entities—man and
woman—into a common partnership. Indeed, the anakalupteria marks the moment
in the Greek marriage ceremony when the groom lifts the bride's veil and is said to
look upon her for the first time.4 Husband and wife are thus literally strangers to
each other, but through the institution of marriage, they will become partners and
create a household in common. As Plutarch observes in his Advice to Bride and
Groom, it is a good thing for a husband to sympathize with his wife's concerns and
vice versa so that they derive strength from each other like "ropes intertwined" and
so that their partnership is preserved by the actions of both. Plutarch goes on to
suggest that this sense of common purpose and the effacement of difference is
reflected in the physical offspring that is the very goal of marriage:
For nature mingles (|jiyvuoi) us through our bodies so that taking one portion
from each of us and blending it, she should give us back offspring which is com-
mon (KOIVOV) to both, so that neither can divide or distinguish what is his (her)
own (i'5iov) from that of the other (aAXoTpiov). Such a partnership (KOIVOJVICI) of
property as well is especially beneficial to married couples, who should pour
together all their resources into a common fund, mixing it up (ava|j£iâi) so that
neither can consider part to be his (i'Siov) and another part the other's
(aXAoTpiov), but all [is to be considered] his own and nothing the other's. (Mor.
140 e-f)
For Plutarch, the partnership exemplified in producing offspring should extend to

all aspects of married life, including property and opinions.5 In the face of conflict
and contact between men and women (symbolic perhaps of other fundamental
conflicts), it is the goal of marriage to obscure difference in the interest of a harmo-
nious union.
In addition to creating unity out of a plurality, marriage raises the primal rela-
tions between the sexes to the level of civilized life; it is the mechanism that chan-
nels animal-like sexuality into the production of legitimate children.6 Similarly, for
the bride, marriage effects her transformation from a state of wildness associated
with nature to her new role as wife in her husband's household and in the larger
The Lay of the Land 63
civic community. This movement from nature to culture is reflected in many of the
rituals that comprise the marriage ceremony itself. On their wedding day, for
example, Athenian girls carry a pan normally used for roasting barley; a sieve is
carried by a young child in the procession. Another custom demands that a pestle
be hung outside the wedding chamber.7 Finally, Zenobius explains that among the
Athenians, it was a wedding custom for a child with both parents living
(amphithales) to be crowned with thistles mixed with the fruit of the oak, and to
carry around a winnowing basket full of bread saying: "I escaped the bad, I found
the better."8 The state of marriage, personified thus by the boy crowned with acorns
and thistles, occupies a place somewhere between primitive nature and an idealized
golden age. Similarly, the various culinary instruments (barley pan, sieve, pestle)
involved in the wedding ceremony represent marriage as the introduction of culti-
vated life.9
Reflective of this view of marriage as a movement from nature to culture is the
prominence of agricultural imagery in wedding poetry. Catullus, for example, in
the paired songs of young girls and boys in a wedding hymn, uses agricultural
imagery to represent these conflicting aspects of marriage.10 First from the femi-
nine perspective, a girl is like a flower thriving in a walled garden; as long as she is
untouched by the plough, many desire her. But as soon as she is picked, she is no
longer attractive to anyone. In the responding strophe, however, the boys challenge
this view with a song in praise of the productive benefits of agriculture. Untended,
the unmarried vine wastes its fruit on the ground, but if it should be "married" to an
elm tree, it will flourish productively. Catullus makes the connection quite clear:
untouched (intacta) is the equivalent of uncultivated (inculta), and it is only as a
cultivated vine, married to an elm, that a young girl will be either desirable or
useful.
Another metaphor that reflects the similarity between marriage and agriculture
equates women to be married with the land itself. The female body is often charac-
terized in Greek literature as a fertile field, ready to be ploughed and sown with
seeds.11 In Pythian 4, for example, Pindar refers to Greek contact with the Lemnian
women in terms of indiscriminate sowing:
And in foreign fields, the fateful day or nights received at that time the
seed of your splendid prosperity. For there the race of Euphemus was
planted [to endure] forever. (Pyth. 4.254-57)12
"The fact is," as Vernant bluntly puts it, "for the Greeks marriage is a form of
ploughing, with the woman as the furrow and the husband as the labourer."13
The ultimate purpose of marriage is to produce legitimate children, and this goal
too is conceived in agricultural terms. When the father of the bride hands his
daughter over to her future husband, he utters the following formula: "I give her to
you for the cultivation (ploughing) of legitimate children" (TOUT^V yvr|oicov

naiScov £tt' apoTcoi 001 5i5co(ji).14 The mechanism for transforming a virgin girl
into a fruitful mother is marriage, and it follows then that images from the realm of
agriculture—the means for making unworked land productive—play an important
role in marriage ideology. This impulse to feminize the land reflects a belief in the
similarities between a woman's power to reproduce and the annual agricultural
cycles of the earth. As the myth of Demeter and Persephone and the ritual of the
Thesmophoria also suggest, female reproduction is coincident with the fruit that
mother earth produces each spring.15 Although marriage may be, as Plutarch sug-
gests, a unified partnership, with each member contributing to the common good, it
is not an equal partnership, and part of what the rhetoric of acculturation does is to
establish the terms of the relationship between husband and wife. As the mother of
her husband's children, a woman is the equivalent of cultivated land, owned by her
husband; she is thus incorporated into her husband's house, his soil, his hearth.16
The husband is the one with the plough; he brings order and culture to the feminine
land; he has the power and control. In Plutarch's view, the ideal marriage is one
where husband and wife are in agreement, but one in which the husband's leader-
ship (ny£|jovia) and preferences are evident.17
Indeed, marriage takes on a darker, more threatening countenance when seen
from a woman's perspective. No longer a celebration of the progression from prim-
itive wildness to a state of greater civilization, marriage becomes an expression of
sexual violence. In particular, myths of rape (both within and without marriage)
reflect the destructive nature of erotic power. The rape of Persephone, for example,
by Hades, god of the underworld, sets up a cultural model of marriage as synony-
mous with sexuality and violence, a kind of death.18 Marriage and abduction are
closely paralleled in the iconographic tradition of vase painting as well. The tech-
nique of representing the bride being led away, her husband's hand upon her wrist,
characterizes marriage as an abduction.19 It reflects the bride's passive role; she has
no power to control her destiny as she is transferred from the possession of one
male (her father) to that of another (her husband).20
Marriage, a rite of passage, entails a change of status, a change of residence, a
formal and final separation from all that is familiar to the bride—her family, her
home. Sappho powerfully captures the sense of apprehension and irrevocable
change that marriage brings to a woman's life:
Virginity, virginity, where have you gone, leaving me behind?

Never again shall I come to you, never again shall I come. (Fr. 114 L-P)21
A girl's virginity is a highly prized commodity, one not easily nor willingly relin-
quished, and this fact is also reflected in aspects of the marriage ceremony. Pollux,
for example, tells us about the doorkeeper posted outside the bridal chamber who
"roars at the women trying to rescue the bride" (3.42) and suggests that the bride is
being held against her will.22
In addition to separating the bride from her family and home, marriage entails
the very real physical violence of defloration. Again, in epithalamial poetry, agri-
cultural imagery is used to represent this destructive act as the picking of flowers or
fruit. In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Persephone is abducted by Hades while
she is playing with friends, picking flowers in a meadow. She herself is compared
to a flower as she is plucked from her companions by the god of the underworld.23
Sappho likens young women leaving home to be married with fruit being picked
from a tree:
Like the sweet-apple that reddens on the bough top, on the top of the
topmost bough, the apple pickers forgot it; no they did not quite forget,
but were not able to reach it. (Fr. 105a L-P)
The passage underscores both the traditional reluctance of the bride and her con-
summate desirability. Another fragment from the same poem graphically describes
the destructive violence that marks a girl's transition from child to bride as purple
flowers crushed upon the ground:
Like the hyacinth that the shepherd men tread upon with their feet in
the hills, and on the ground the purple flower .. . (Fr. 105c L-P)24
Although marriage and the production of children may deiine a woman's adult exis-
tence, her transition to that status is marked with great reluctance and ambivalence.
Thus in Greek myth and art, marriage is represented both as a manifestation of cul-
ture and as an expression of violent nature.25
Thus the Greek concept of marriage is an ambiguous amalgamation predicated
upon the realization that this particular union of opposites (male and female) is both
a civilized and a violent act. The integrative force of desire, or eros, is also one of
power, and for this reason will never be confined to the bedroom but will inform
other projects of conquest, domination, and acquisition as well. This nexus of inte-
gration, acculturation, and violence makes marriage an apt metaphor for the colo-
nial experience. Indeed, within colonial discourse, the rituals of marriage and the
rhetoric of the rape myth help shape the memory of contact between the Greek
colonists and the native inhabitants in such a way as to represent the inevitable vio-
lence of overseas settlement as a harmonious and productive union of opposites.
Another factor that motivates the analogy within colonial discourse between
marriage and colonization—especially insofar as it addresses the arrival and city
foundation itself—is a related narrative pattern, that of noncolonial city founda-
tions. In many contexts, poetic and prose alike, noncolonial city foundations are
represented as the product of divine rape—an Olympian god rapes a local nymph,
and her name (or that of their offspring) is given to the new city or island. Since
this particular narrative pattern (like that of the murderer in exile) proves to have a
profound effect on colonial representation, it will be helpful at this point to consider
a few examples.
Ion of Chios says in his history of Chios that Poseidon came to the island when
it was uninhabited and had intercourse there with a nymph. When she gave birth, it
was snowing (xiova), and so Poseidon called his son Chios, and this became the
name of the island as well.26 Poseidon was also responsible for the foundation of
Ascra, as Hegesinus suggests in his poem the Atthis. Poseidon lay with Ascra, and
Oeoclus, the child of their union, founded the city named after the nymph:
And again with Ascra lay Poseidon Earthshaker, and she bore him a
son when the year revolved, Oeoclus. He first, with the children of
Aloeus, founded Ascra, which lies at the foot of Mt. Helicon, rich in
springs. (Paus. 9.29.1)
In Isthmian 8, Pindar tells us that Zeus lay with the eponymous nymphs of Thebes
and Aegina, daughters of the river god Asopus:
And a man raised in seven-gated Thebes must make first offering of the
Graces' finest song to Aegina, for they [Theba and Aegina] were born
twin daughters of one father, the youngest of the Aesopids, and they
were pleasing to Zeus, the king, who settled one beside the beautiful
flowing spring of Dirce as founder of a city which loves chariots, and
you, he brought to the island of Oenopia and slept with you where you
gave birth to glorious Aeacus, most dear of mortals to his deep-thun-
dering father. (16-23)27
This narrative pattern depends upon the tendency to associate the female with ele-
ments of nature, particularly with the land itself, and to ally the male with sexuality
and culture. The political and cosmic power of Olympian deities such as Zeus and
Poseidon, wielding thunderbolts and tridents, is reinforced and redescribed phalli-
cally in terms of sexual aggression. The motif of rape thus incorporates an impor-
tant set of oppositions into its representation of a city foundation: culture versus
nature, male versus female, Olympian god versus local nymph. The resolution of
the myth describes founding a city as the conquest of culture, male, and Olympian
values over the symbol for nature, female, and locality.
Colonial tales, as we are beginning to see, differ significantly from these non-
colonial accounts of city foundations; most important, they must motivate and
describe the necessary movement from one city to another, and they also reflect the
influential role that the Delphic oracle plays in the archaic colonial movement. Yet
in spite of these differences, once the colonial narrative reaches the new world and
the city foundation itself, the issues involved in noncolonial foundations become
relevant to overseas colonization. For this reason, erotic conquest as the emplot-
ment of the city foundation narrative endures in colonial discourse. Issues of
power, acculturation, and the terms of Greco-native interaction are addressed
through the use of marriage as a metaphor for colonial foundations.
Contact (and conflict) with indigenous populations was very much a part of the
Greek colonial experience. The nature of this interaction seems to have taken two
forms: first, the Greeks expelled many of those occupying the land they wished to
settle, and second, they solidified their foundations by marrying local women.
Although Greek sources are notoriously reticent about intermarriage between the
Greek colonists and the native women, there seems to be little doubt that it did take
place.28 In the absence of direct Greek testimony, it has been suggested that we
read the tale of the rape of the Sabine women, famous from Livy's account of early
Roman history, as evidence that the Greek colonists also married local women to
ensure the future survival of their new cities.29 Indeed, I think we can push this
model beyond the mere fact of Greco-native intermarriage. It is abundantly clear
that within the larger scope of Roman cultural memory and self-representation, the
rape of the Sabine women does much more than record how the young Roman state
managed to ensure its future population. Within this tale, the political conquest of
the Sabine people is told as the abduction and subsequent marriage of their daugh-
ters. So too, in Greek colonial discourse, the motif of rape (and marriage) extends
beyond the issue of future populations to determine the political relationship that
will evolve between Greeks and indigenous peoples.
Let us look closely at Livy's account in the hope that it can inform our reading
of the less explicit Greek material. Livy explains that while Rome was strong
enough to hold its own in combat with the other nearby states, a lack of women
threatened the city's future. Romulus asked their neighbors for the rights of inter-
marriage, explaining that they would be lucky to mix with Roman stock, but none
of their neighbors agreed; they were afraid that Rome would gain too much power.
And so, Livy says, the matter seemed certain to end in violence: haud dubie ad vim
spectare res coepit (1.9.6). Romulus then contrived a plan to take place during the
Consualia games, which the Sabines would attend with their children and wives. At
a designated signal, each Roman youth grabbed a Sabine woman: signoque dato
iuventus Romana ad rapiendas virgines discurrit (1.9.10). The Sabines were furi-
ous, but Romulus explained to them that their daughters were to be married and
thus would become partners in the possessions—citizenship and children—of the
Romans, and the Sabine women were soon reconciled to their new status as Roman
wives.
Livy's account of the rape of the Sabine women, however, does not end with the
rape itself and the solution to the population problem. The story concludes with the
subsequent attack by the Sabines upon Rome in which the Sabine wives, with loos-
ened hair and torn garments, rushed out into the middle of the fray—between
fathers and husbands—to call for peace on the strength of the marriage tie lest there
be impious bloodshed as fathers killed children and vice versa. Livy explains that
in response to this demonstration, the leaders called a truce and thus made one city
out of two: sed civitatem unam ex duabus faciunt (1.13.4). And so it is clear that
the fact of Romans marrying Sabines is only the first chapter of this programmatic
tale; it sets the stage for what is truly significant—the establishment of political ties
between Romans and Sabines. Rape, an act of violence, contains the seeds of its
own reconciliation. The transfer of women from fathers to husbands, from Sabines
to Romans, establishes a familial connection that erases cultural difference and ulti-
mately determines future political relationships.
Returning to the Greek colonial traditions, we see similar strategies at work, and
now we can explore how the rhetoric of marriage articulates the representation of
archaic colonization. First, the view of marriage as a harmonious union of oppo-
sites (male and female) becomes symbolic of another kind of union as well—that of
Greeks and indigenous populations. Just as the rape of the Sabine women ends with
the creation of one city where once there were two, part of the motivation to
describe Greek colonization as a marriage reflects a desire to obscure the differ-
ences between the Greeks and those whose land they have taken. In marriage, as
Plutarch says, husband and wife physically mingle to produce a common child, and
following this model, they combine all other assets so that there will be no distinc-
tions between what belongs to one and to the other. In colonization as well, the use
of marriage imagery leads us to imagine the new civic creation as a joint project of
Greeks and native peoples; a harmonious union of opposites, one (Greek) people
where there once were two. The very success of this strategy of unification is per-
haps at the root of our frustration in attempts to determine the details of Greek inter-
action with indigenous peoples.
Marriage as a model of integration is encoded within an oracle from a Syracu-
san colonization tale that describes the city foundation as the mingling of Greek and
local waters. Pausanias tells us that Archias, a Corinthian, was dispatched by the
Delphic god to found the colony of Syracuse in Sicily. The following oracle,
included within the tale, describes the geographical site of the new colony in detail:
A certain Ortygia lies in the misty sea, above Thrinacia, where the
mouth of the Alpheus gushes forth, having been mingled with the
streams of fair-flowing Arethusa. (Paus. 5.7.3)
Embedded within this geographical description, the oracle contains its own plot,
one that tells the story of a colonial foundation as a marriage. Ortygia, the site of
the colony, is located as the union of the Greek river Alpheus and the local spring
called Arethusa; their waters mingle, and the oracle deliberately evokes the legend
that explains why the Alpheus river, which originates in Greek Arcadia, passes
through the sea and mixes its waters with the Syracusan spring. Pausanias tells us
that a hunter named Alpheus fell in love with Arethusa, a huntress. Arethusa, how-
ever, was unwilling to marry and crossed to an island opposite Syracuse called
Ortygia, and there turned from a woman into a spring. Alpheus, too, was changed
by his love into a river.30 Thus marriage and colonial themes merge: the Greek
river's transoceanic travel from the Peloponnesus to Sicily prefigures the colonists'
own westward movement from Corinth; erotic conquest symbolizes a new political
foundation, and the intermingling (jjioyopEvov) of the two streams becomes an
emblem for Greek and native interaction. This use of marriage imagery to represent
the act of city foundation itself as a union of opposites is especially interesting in
light of the two previous colonial metaphors—purification and riddling—which
highlight the need for discrimination and distinction. Leaving home is an act of
separation; now, once the colonists have arrived in the new world, creating a new
city is a different kind of process—an act of reintegration and synthesis.
In addition to describing colonization as a peaceful and productive union of
Greek colonists and native populations, the civilizing ideology of marriage negoti-
ates the terms (within the colonial tale) for this new relationship. The tendency to
equate women with the land together with the role that agriculture plays in both
marriage and colonization, makes this metaphorical system work—control of one
logically entails mastery over the other. It is common in Greek art and literature to
represent a geographical location as feminine. Pindar, for example, is especially
fond of identifying cities and islands with their eponymous nymphs; Cyrene,
Thebes, Aegina, and Rhodes are all both land and female.31 Personified as a
nymph, the land itself becomes virginal—fresh, green, ready to be occupied for the
first time, and it is easy to see how this rhetoric applies to a colonial enterprise. The
ideal colonial landscape, as we have seen in the Homeric description of the
Cyclopes' island, is one which is both free of previous occupants and full of pro-
duce. In this virgin state, the colonial landscape has great potential but no actual
experience of settlement; the land is fertile—not overworked. Descriptions of the
American landscape in colonial times make this same analogy. In 1616, John Smith
described the New England sea coast as feminine and untouched: "her treasure hav-
ing yet never been opened, nor her originalls wasted, consumed, nor abused."32
The eponymous nymph symbolizes both the physical land and its occupants; her
sexual conquest thus represents both the agricultural domestication of her land and
the political domination of her people. In her discussion of the language and
imagery used to describe American colonial landscapes, Annette Kolodny remarks
that the tendency to describe the Indian women as beautiful, gracious, cheerful, and
friendly "initiated a habit of mind that came to see the Indian woman as a kind of
emblem for a land that was similarly entertaining the Europeans 'with all love and
kindness . . . and as much bounty.'"33 Kolodny also observes that John Rolfe's
marriage to Pocahantas in April of 1614 served in some symbolic sense as "a kind
of objective correlative for the possibility of the Europeans' actually possessing the
charms inherent in the virgin continent."34 Similarly, within the rhetoric of Greek
colonial discourse, marriage with a local woman or nymph signals control of the
land and all its occupants.
Such is the case in Olympian 1, the poem in which Pindar describes the founda-
tion of Rhodes as the picking of a rose. The ode tells the story of the history of the
island of Rhodes in three parts, presented in reverse order. The third panel of the
triptych is thus the foundation of the island itself, told as the marriage of the god
Helius and a young nymph, daughter of Aphrodite, Rhodes. Throughout the nar-
rative, Pindar describes Rhodes as both an island and a young girl; he introduces her
as the ocean-y one, daughter of Aphrodite and bride of Helius (TCXV TTOVTIOV/
UIJVE'WV, naTS' 'AcppoSfTac; 'AsAioio TE vupcpav, 'P68ov, 13-14). Helius was
absent when the gods were dividing up the world, and the island that would become
his prize was not yet visible:
When Zeus and the immortals divided up the earth, Rhodes was not yet
visible in the marine expanse, but was hidden, an island, in the salty
depths. (55-57)
Once Helius does arrive on the scene (or when the sun finally comes out) he spies
the fertile land growing and asks that it be his allotment:
Since he [Helius] told him [Zeus] that he had seen in the hoary sea
earth growing from the ground, rich in food for men and kindly to their
flocks. (62-64)
Thus, Rhodes is truly virgin territory; this land has never before been seen, let
alone touched. Again, the potential fertility of the land is emphasized; the earth has
plenty to offer both men and flocks. Once Rhodes does see the light of day, the
island blooms like a plant:
There burst forth from the moist sea an island . . . (69-70)

In other words, Pindar uses the language of the natural world, in particular, agricultural
imagery, to describe the birth of the island of Rhodes.35 A period of fertilizing snow and
rain is followed by the renewed warmth of the sun; the result is the growth and blossom-
ing of a flower, a rose. At this point in the poem, Pindar capitalizes on the well-known
play on the name of the island Rhodes and the name of a flower, a rose.36 As G. Nor-
wood puts it, "everyone speaks of the Island as 'Rhodes.' But to Pindar and all who
heard his ode it meant The Rose."37 The pun operates visually as well on a Rhodian coin
showing a rose on one side and Helius on the other (Figure 4.1). In Olympian 7, once
Figure 4.1. Top: Rose. Gold Stater from Rhodes (Reverse), ca. 400-333 B.C.E. Bottom:
Helius (Obverse). London, British Museum. (Photo courtesy of the Trustees of the British
Museum.)
the rose-girl blossoms, the natural vegetation theme of Helius/sun and Rhodes/ rose
merges into the realm of male and female, into marriage and the foundation of cities:38
There, having mingled with Rhodes at that time, he begat seven sons
who inherited the wisest thoughts of men of earlier times. One of
whom sired Camirus, lalysus, the eldest, and Lindus. (71-74)
Helius, the Olympian god of the sun, marries the young nymph Rhodes, and their
marriage is symbolic of the birth of Rhodes, the island. As in the Sappho fragment
that describes a young girl's loss of virginity as an apple being picked, here Pindar
leads us to imagine the sexual consummation of Helius and Rhodes as Helius pick-
ing a flower, a rose. The marital union of Helius and Rhodes produces seven sons,
and one of these seven bore the three who give their names to the cities of
Rhodes—Camirus, lalysus, and Lindus—and the poet thus reminds us that this mar-
riage is also a foundation. Rhodes is both a girl and a rose, and her marriage is rep-
resented as the picking of a flower, but "the rose" is also an island, and so the pick-
ing of the flower symbolizes the island's foundation.
A passage from an American colonial tradition, uncanny in its similarity to the
Greek material, also equates colonial territory with a young girl. In 1666, in A
Character of the Province of Mary-Land, George Alsop portrays the landscape of
Maryland as "Mary-Land drest in her green and fragrant Mantle of the Spring":
Pleasant, in respect of the multitude of Navigable Rivers and Creeks that conve-
niently and most profitably lodge within the armes of her green, spreading, and
delightful Woods; whose natural womb (by her plenty) maintains and preserves
the several diversities of Animals that rangingly inhabit her Woods; as she doth
otherwise generously fructifie this piece of Earth with almost all sorts of Vegeta-
bles, as well Flowers with their varieties of colours and smells, as Herbes and
Roots with their several effects and operative virtues, that offer their benefits daily
to supply the want of the Inhabitant whene're their necessities shall Sub-poena
them to wait on their commands.39
The foundation and settlement of new land is thus represented both here and in
Olympian 1 in natural, reproductive terms. Alsop and Pindar similarly personify
the land to be settled as a young, virgin girl (she gives her name to the land) ready
and willing to receive the foreign seed, which in turn will bring civilization and
prosperity to the new world. The usual agricultural metaphor for marriage is
reversed. Instead of marriage characterized as the way to tame and civilize a
woman for the production of children, as one would plough a field in order to reap
the harvest, the settlement and domestication of foreign territory becomes as natural
and civilized a process as marriage and procreation. The ploughing of the earth and
sowing of seed inherent in settling and marking out territory is expressed as inter-
course with a beautiful young native girl.
Agriculture is the mediating term that fosters this connection between marriage
and colonization; thus in colonial discourse, male-female relationships are often
mapped onto the land. The colonial tale of Rhegium, for example, uses agricultural
imagery to designate the colonial site in terms of sexual intercourse. Crisis in the
form of crop failure at home forced the Chalcidians to dedicate a tithe of their popu-
lation to Delphi in hopes of relief from famine. Those dedicated to Delphi were
subsequently sent out as a colonial expedition with the following oracle:
Where the Apsia, most holy of rivers, falls into the sea, on that spot
where as one approaches, the female weds the male, there found the
city. He gives you the Ausonian land. (Diod. 8.23.2)
At the end of the previous chapter, we discussed this tale as paradigmatic of the
colonial narrative structure; the oracle designates the colonial site as a state of crisis.
It represents the colonial landscape as an inverted world, one in which, contrary to
nature, women are the active parties in sexual intercourse. Now, I would like to
note that the topography of the site to be settled is eroticized—the solution to the
puzzling oracle is recognized once the colonists find a spot where a vine is entwined
around a fig tree. Since the Greek word for vine (q a|jn£Xoc;) is feminine and the
word for fig tree (6 Epiveoc;) is masculine, a vine entwined around the tree repre-
sents the female taking the active role in intercourse.40 Through this metaphorical
use of agricultural imagery, common within epithalamial traditions, sexual inter-
course marks the spot, and the marriage theme structures a colonial legend.
An oracle from a Tarentine colonial tale also merges agricultural and sexual
imagery to describe the colonial site. The Spartan colony of Tarentum was founded
by Phalanthus and a group of political exiles called the Partheniae. Expelled from
Sparta, they consulted the Delphic oracle and received the following response to
their request to settle Siconia:
Look to Satyrion and the gleaming water of Taras, a harbor on the left,
and the place where a goat loves salt water, wetting the tip of his grey
beard. There build Tarentum, mounted upon the Satyrion. (Diod.
8.21.3)
As we have seen, the solution to the oracle depends upon reading the goat drinking
salt water as a metaphor for a fig tree dipping its branches into the sea. The
metaphor of goat for fig tree, in turn, hinges upon the famed sexual prowess of he-
goats and the similarly penetrative pollination practice of the fig tree.41 Both wild
goats and wild fig trees are distinguished from their feminine counterparts and asso-
ciated with male sexuality. The beard, smell, and mating behavior of the male goat
make it an apt metaphor (in English as well) for male lewdness and lechery. These
associations are made manifest in the mythical figure of the satyr—part man, part
goat, and famed for its wild and licentious sexual behavior.42 Similarly, the
wild/male fig tree (spiveoc;) is opposed to the domestic/female fig (ou<q) along gen-
der lines that reflect its method of reproduction.43 The wild fig is perceived as the
inseminator, and the female fig is believed to be the recipient of the seed or pollen.
Thus, in the Tarentum oracle, the metaphor of a wild goat for a wild fig tree also
locates the site of the new colony in an erotically charged landscape. In addition to
the randy goat, the site is identified with respect to a harbor on the left, an image
often suggestive of female sexuality.44 The river's name, Satyrion, certainly rein-
forces the goat/fig metaphor with all its sexual overtones, and finally, the climax of
the oracle represents the city's foundation with language often used to describe a
male animal mounting a female (pe(3acoTa).45 It is appropriate that this eroticized
oracle be delivered to the Partheniae, themselves the product not of a legitimate
marriage but of a promiscuous free-for-all as a result of which—since they knew
their mothers (ndpOevoi) but not their fathers—they were called the Partheniae.46
Plugging the marriage/agriculture metaphor into colonial discourse paints over-
seas settlement in the rosy hues associated with the gift of fruitful civilization to a
previously wild and savage land. Suppressing any hints of previous occupants or
the violence of their removal, this strategy evokes images of colonization as healthy
vines, fruit-laden trees, and fertile fields aplenty. Indeed, Croton's colonial tradition
exploits the marriage analogy to equate the production of a new colony with the
reproductive powers of its founder. According to Diodorus, Myscellus of Rhype
asks the Delphic oracle whether he will have children. In response he is told that
Apollo will give him children, but first he must found the colony of Croton:
Myscellus, short-in-the-back, Apollo the far-darter loves you and will

give you offspring. But first he commands this for you, that you make
your home in mighty Croton among the fair ploughland. (Diod. 8.17.1)
We recognize the imagery. The oracle conflates the two ways that land can be pro-
ductive—amid the fine fields (KaXouc; sv apoupaic;) of Croton, Myscellus, both
father and founder, will sow the seeds of children and of a new city.47 A successful
marriage is measured in terms of legitimate children, and the success of a colonial
settlement similarly depends upon the colonists' ability to master the land, to trans-
form the virgin territory into a productive landscape—a city. And so the metaphor
of marriage together with the feminization of the land becomes a useful way to
describe colonization.48
J.-P. Vernant has suggested that agriculture, and marriage by analogy, occupies
a middle ground between a wild, primitive state and the other extreme—a golden
age in which no cultivation is necessary since all is produced spontaneously:
During the Golden Age, before the institution of sacrifice, fruits and corn germi-
nated spontaneously in the soil. It was as unnecessary to plough the land and plant
it with seed in order to reap the harvest as it was to labour with women and fill their
wombs with seed in order to obtain children from them. The sacrificial meal, insti-
tuted by Prometheus, has two effects. It introduces a diet in which the consump-
tion of cooked meat from domesticated animals goes along with agricultural labour
and the harvesting of cereals. Its other immediate consequence is, as Hesiod tells
us, the appearance of the first woman and the establishment of marriage.49
Thus the institutions of marriage and agriculture map out "the right distance"
between an idealized golden-age landscape and a world of savage primitivism, and I
would argue that colonization occupies this same middle ground.50 The colonial
landscape, described in terms of agriculture and marriage, is located somewhere
between the idealized Homeric description of an unoccupied (virgin) land that pro-
duces its crops and flocks freely and the unproductive, savage world that
Archilochus describes as the bony back of an ass.51
Finally, within the framework of characterizing overseas settlement as an act of
civilization, the myth of rape—either alone or embedded within a marriage con-
text—acknowledges the violence of colonization, the force built into this view of
civilization. It disguises the imperial flavor of colonization, the military and politi-
cal domination, and figures it instead as erotic conquest. We find this strategy at
work in the foundation tradition of Aetna. In 476 B.C.E., Hieron, tyrant of Syracuse,
founded the city of Aetna, and Aeschylus composed a tragedy in celebration of the
colonial foundation. Macrobius recounts for us the legend of the city's colonization
that formed the subject of Aeschylus' Aetnaeae:
In Sicily there is a river Symaethus next to which the nymph Thalia was made
pregnant by Zeus. Afraid of Hera, she asked that the earth swallow her up, and it
did. But when it came time for those whom she had carried in her womb to be
born, the earth opened up and the two children born from the womb of Thalia
came forth. They were called Palici from "ano TOU naXiv iKea6ai" since after
first being plunged into the earth, they returned from it again.52
Servius, in his commentary on the same Virgilian passage, tells a similar story of
the birth and subsequent naming of the twin gods, but in his account, the name of
the nymph is Aetna.53
An aggressive political project designed to add to Hieron's own power and sta-
tus is thus represented, within the foundation legend, as an act of sexual conquest.
Diodorus tells us that Hieron removed the original Greek inhabitants of Naxos and
Catana and established there settlers of his own choosing in their place; he then
changed the name of the city to Aetna.54 Once the colony was settled, Aeschylus'
Aetnaeae told the story of the colonial foundation as the rape of a local nymph
(Aetna or Thalia) by Zeus, king of the Olympian gods. Hieron's foundation of
Aetna, his political conquest and his status as founder of this territory, is thus cast in
the same mold as Zeus' sexual domination of a local girl, Aetna. The cosmic power
of Zeus becomes symbolic of Hieron's political authority. A parallel from the six-
teenth century can help illuminate this representational strategy, as Margaret Carroll
shows in her description of a room in Federigo Gonzaga's Palazzo del Te in Mantua
from around 1530:
To take one room, the Sala del'Aquile, as an example, we find three stuccho
reliefs depicting rapes—or more precisely the forcible abduction of unconsenting
sexual partners: Jupiter taking Europa, Neptune taking Amymone, and Pluto car-
rying Proserpina into the underworld. Combined with a fourth relief of the
enthroned Jupiter conferring with the gods, the three rape scenes thematize the
rights of dominion each god enjoys in his respective region—earth, sea, and
underworld—analogous to the rights of dominion enjoyed by Federigo Gonzaga
and the other princely rulers in the empire of Charles V. Placed between a centau-
romachy and an amazonomachy below, and Jupiter destroying Phaethon in the
vault above, these scenes of rape contribute to the ceiling's central theme of dis-
playing the manifold aspects of Federigo's personal and political power.55
In her discussion of this and other decorative programs of this period, Carroll
underscores the persuasive power of representing and legitimating political abso-
lutism in terms of erotic prowess. Reading Aeschylus' account of the colonization
of Aetna in this light, we see once more that political hegemony masquerades as
sexual conquest with women as symbol for a land and its people. The power of
husbands and rulers is read as one and the same; the torches of war are called those
of marriage.56
We have come full circle, back to Plato's wedding torch, passed on from one
household to another, from one generation to the next, as a symbol of family iden-
tity and cultural continuity. But now we recognize its ambivalent nature: fire, the
harbinger of civilization, never completely loses its potential for destruction. In
1615, a war between France and Spain was brought to an end through a double mar-
riage between the two royal families, and the transformation from war to peace
through marriage was celebrated with the following announcement:
War is dead, and those who carried the torch of division within the state are those
who now carry the torch of love. They sacrifice all their enmities on the altar of
faith and make a victim without bile for the happy alliance of their scepters.57
Greek colonial discourse makes this same substitution of erotics for politics. The
prominence of marriage imagery and tales of rape in Greek colonial discourse
betray much more than the fact of Greco-native marriage (although that fact is not
unimportant). In addition, it suggests a strategy for representing colonization at its
moment of contact, and often conflict, with indigenous populations. The legitima-
tion of violence is part of what lies behind the use of marriage imagery in colonial
discourse; equally important are the ideology of acculturation and a belief in mar-
riage as a model for the integration of Greek and native elements. All three issues
depend upon the impulse, pervasive in Greek thought, to equate women and the
land as partners in the cosmic cycle of productivity, both in need of men and their
tools of civilization in order to bear fruit.
Notes
1. In both the literary and iconographical traditions, rape and marriage are often
conflated or confused, and the significant but ambiguous role allotted to sexual violence
reflects the paradox of Greek marriage. On the one hand, for a woman, marriage serves as
the inevitable goal of adulthood; it provides the framework for her participation in civic and
family life. But at the same time, marriage represents a threatening change of status, a viola-
tion of a virgin's personal integrity and a harsh separation from her family and all that is
familiar. Sexual violence is thus very much a part of the Greek conception of marriage, and
in the following discussion I will treat accounts of marriage and rape not as reflective of sep-
arate ideologies but as two aspects of one cultural construct, each of which is important for
representations of colonial foundations.
2. Burkert 1985 pp. 58-59; Zeitlin 1986.
3. Marriage as an institution is allied with many other aspects of Greek culture, and the
following discussion is by no means intended to be comprehensive. I am primarily concerned
with outlining those major points that will be relevant to my subsequent discussion of its role
in representations of colonization. For more complete treatments of Greek marriage, see
Detienne 1977; Redfleld 1982; Vernant 1988 pp. 45-70; Oakley and Sinos 1993.
4. On the anakalupteria ritual, see Oakley and Sinos 1993; Sissa 1990 pp. 94—99 on the
significance of the unveiling ritual as symbolic of the bride's subsequent loss of virginity.
Cf. Plato Laws 77 le where the discussion concerns putting an end to this tradition of husband
and wife meeting as strangers.
5. Cf. Odysseus' famous speech to Nausicaa at Od. 6.180-84 where he describes the
perfect marriage as one where husband and wife are like-minded in all respects.
6. Vernant 1977 p. viii.; Redfield 1982 pp. 192-93.
7. Detienne 1977 p. 117; Oakley and Sinos 1993.
8. Zenobius 3.98 = 855 PMG.
9. Detienne 1977 pp. 116-18: " the various culinary instruments paraded on the wedding
day—the pan for roasting barley, the sieve and the pestle—can be seen as mediators between
the two extreme terms reconciled in the figure of the child who is both crowned with thorny
plants and loaded with bread. At one extreme we have the wild fruits and plants which repre-
sent the food of an age that preceded the cultivation of cereals; at the other, the loaves of
bread ready to be eaten as a pledge for the newly married couple's impending participation in
the life of milled corn" (p. 117). See also Vernant 1977 pp. vi-x; Redfield 1982 p. 193.
10. Catullus 62.
11. Cf. Henderson 1991 pp. 134-36, 166-69; Dubois 1988 pp. 39-85 for further exam-
ples of agricultural imagery used to describe sexual congress.
12. See also Aesch. Sept. 750-55; Soph. Ant. 569; OT 1207-12; 1255-57; 1484-85;
1496-98.
13. Vernant 1977 p. ix.
14. Menander Perikeiromene 1013-14. Similarly, Plutarch (Mor. 144 b) remarks that
the Athenians observe three sacred ploughings, and the most sacred of all is the "marital sow-
ing and ploughing for the procreation of children."
15. Zeitlin 1982 p. 141 observes that in myth and ritual women are more often associ-
ated with cosmic phenomena and cycles than with historical time frames or events. See also
Detienne 1977 p. 116.
16. Vernant 1988 p. 62.
17. PluLMor 139d.
18. There are also strong connections made between marriage and sacrifice. See Foley
1982; and on the sexualization of ritual killing: Burkert 1985 pp. 58-72.
19. For discussions of the iconographic traditions of marriage and abduction, see Jenkins
1983 (hand-on-wrist motif); Sourvinou-Inwood 1987a (associations with ephebes, hunting);
Oakley and Sinos 1993.
20. Cf. the opening simile in Pindar's Ol. 7.1-6 where the bride is transferred from one
household to another.
21. Cf. Eur. Med. 230-51; Soph. Fr. 524 Nauck.

22. Cf. Plut. Mor. 211 d-e. See Redfield 1982 p. 191.
23. Hymn Horn. Cer. 8. Cf. Find. Pyth. 9.36-37; 109-11. For a discussion of flower
picking in erotic poetry, see Henderson 1976.
24. Cf. the end of Catullus 11. In this poem, Catullus inverts the traditional gender roles
and describes Lesbia's destruction of his love in epithalamial terms; his love is like a flower
at the edge of the meadow, cut down by the plough.
25. Cf. Zeitlin 1986 p. 143. She argues that the erotic is largely inseparable from the
notion of coercive power, and for this reason there is "a tension between the notion of sexual
union (and marriage) as a wedding of opposites in a harmonious ensemble that may symbol-
ize a general cultural harmony, and that darker side, where the mythic imagination cannot
keep sexuality in the bedroom and out of the same camp as its antithetical activities such as
war, violent struggle, or the animal world where the male tames his horses and the hunter
pursues and overtakes his prey."
26. Paus. 7.4.8.
27. Cf. Paus. 2.29.2. There is a close parallel from the American colonial tradition of
Virginia and Maryland as sister provinces; see John Hammond, author of a 1659 pamphlet
entitled "Leah and Rachel, or, The Two Fruitfull Sisters Virginia and Mary-land," in Hall
1910pp. 281-308.
28. Rouge 1970 and Van Compernolle 1983 both argue that the colonists did marry local
women. See Graham 1984 who argues that Greek women must have joined the colonists to
serve as priestesses for Greek cults. For more on the question of Greco-native interaction in
general, see the essays collected in Modes de contact 1983 and Descoeudres 1990.
29. Van Compernolle 1983; he even suggests that Livy might be drawing upon a Greek
colonial tradition.
30. Paus. 5.7.2-4. See also Find. Nem. 1; Ibycus fr. 23 Bergk. This mythic type is itself
drenched in erotic symbolism. In preparation for the Greek wedding ceremony, bridegrooms
were traditionally bathed in local rivers. This ritual is thought to stem from the belief in the
fertile power of water, which was most pronounced in rivers. For this reason, rivers are often
personified in Greek art and myth as gods known for their lechery. See Ginouves 1962 pp.
421-22; Oakley and Sinos 1993.
31. See Shapiro 1988 for the similar tradition of personifying land as female in vase
painting.
32. Cited in Kolodny 1975 pp. 11-12.
33. Kolodny 1975 p. 5.
34. Kolodny 1975 p. 5. Cf. Sahlins 1985 p. 48; he describes a similar practice in Fiji.
"Dynastic legends tell of the origin of the ruling line from the union of an immigrant prince
with a ranking woman of indigenous people. The chiefs stand henceforth as wifetakers and
sisters' sons to the people of the land." We find the same situation in the Aeneid with
Aeneas' dynastic marriage to Lavinia.
35. Cf. Young 1968; Segal 1986a pp. 68-69.
36. Cf. Duchemin 1955 pp. 240-41 for the symbol of the rose in Pindar.
37. Norwood 1945 p. 140. We must not forget that Pindar's odes were primarily heard
in performance, not read as a text. Throughout the poem Pindar refers to the island only in
the oblique cases in which there is no phonological difference between the Greek words for
the island and the flower. See also Lawall 1961 p. 33; Young 1968 p. 89.
38. See Calame 1990 pp. 291-92 on themes of civilization and agriculture in this poem.
39. Cited in Hall 1910 pp. 343-44.
40. Cf. Dion. Hal. 19Fr. 2.
41. See Maurizio 1992 for this discussion of the metaphorical associations between the
wild goat and the wild fig. See Plut. Mor. 139 b for the licentiousness and sexuality typically
associated with Tpayoi.
42. On satyrs and sexuality, see Lissarrague 1990b and more generally, Lissarrague
1990a.
43. The female fig, or OUKH, functions as a metaphor for the female when sexuality is
suggested. See Henderson 1991 pp. 118, 135. On the pollination of fig trees, see Hdt.
1.193.5: "The method of cultivation (of the date palm) is the same as for figs, particularly in
regard to the practice of taking the fruit of what the Greeks call the 'male' palm and tying it
into the 'female' or date-bearing tree, to allow the gall-fly to enter the fruit and ripen it and
prevent it from dropping off. For it is a fact that the male palms have the gall-fly in their
fruit, like wild figs."
44. Cf., for example, Soph. OT 1207.
45. See for example, Plato Phaedr. 250e; Aristotle Hist. An. 575al3. The hyperfertility
of rivers noted above also applies here.
46. Strab. 6.3.2-3. Cf. Vidal-Naquet 1986 pp. 212-14.
47. Cf. Find. Pyth. 9 where the marriage of Apollo and Cyrene produces both a child and
a colony.
48. There are actually three roles that a woman plays in her lifetime: virgin, mother, and
widow, and all three roles are pertinent to colonization as well. Land that was once colo-
nized or occupied but subsequently abandoned is characterized as "widowed." Stephanus of
Byzantium records a Delphic oracle that refers to the city of Arne in such terms: "Apvri
Xnp £ u0aaa IJE'VEI BOIWTIOV av8pa (the widowed Arne awaits her Boeotian husband). Thus
a land that was once settled but then abandoned is like a woman once married but then left
alone when her husband dies. Homer uses this same image to describe the island of the
Cyclopes; the perfect uninhabited colonial site is also bereft of men (av&pcov xnp £ uei). For
this reading of xnP £ u£i, see Clay 1980.
49. Vernant 1977 p. ix.
50. Vernant 1977 p. x: "Positioned as it is between, on the one hand, a radical rejection
of physical union and, on the other, exaltation of the pleasures of love to the exclusion of all
else, lying between sexual impotence and an excess of sexual potency, both of them equally
infertile, marriage like the cereals stands for the 'right distance': this alone can guarantee that
the labour of marriage will bring forth an abundant harvest of legitimate fruits of good
stock."
51. Horn. Od. 9.116-39; Archil. Fr. 17 T.
52. Macrob. Saturn. 5.19.24 (F 6 Radt): "In Sicilia Symaethus fluvius est. iuxta hunc
nympha Thalia conpressu lovis gravida metu lononis optavit, ut sibi terra dehisceret. factum
est. sed ubi venit tempus maturitatis infantum, quos alvo ilia gestaverat, reclusa terra est et
duo infantes de alvo Thaliae progressi emerserunt appellatique sunt 'Palici' 6m6 TOU 'naXiv
i<eo9ai', quoniam prius in terram mersi denuo inde reversi sunt."
53. Servius ad Aen. 9.581 = p. 127-28 Radt. Steph. Byz. 496.7 Meineke (F 7 Radt). He
traces this genealogy to Aeschylus and this play; he also notes that Silenus, in his Sicelica,
makes Aetna the daughter of an Oceanid and Hephaestus. I will discuss this foundation tra-
dition further, especially within its Aeschylean context, in the following chapter.
54. Diod. 11.49.
55. Carroll 1989 p. 6.
56. An inscription accompanying a representation of the rape of Europa upon a tri-
umphal arch for the entry of King Charles IX and his queen into Paris in 1571 suggests Zeus'
rape of Europa as the model both for Charles' future marriage to Isabel of Spain and for his
intended conquest of Asia: "Par le vieil Jupiter Europe fut ravie:/ Le ieune ravira par Isabel
1'Asie." (As the old Jupiter ravished Europa, the young one, through Isabel, will ravish
Asia.) Charles is a young Jupiter imitating the god's erotic and political prowess. Quoted in
Carroll 1989 p. 12.
57. La Reponse de Guerin a M. Guillaume et les resiouissances des Dieus sur les
heureuses alliances de France et d'Espagne (Paris, 1612), p. 49. Cited in Carroll 1989 (her
translation).
II
Texts in Context: Staging the City
5
Hieron and Aetna
Understand what I say to you, eponymous father of the very divine holy rites,
founder of Aetna (Pindar Fr. 105a)
Just as a city's founder lies buried in the middle of the agora, the colonial narrative
occupies a central position in the development and production of a city's emerging
self-identity. For this reason, colonial tales will both reflect the circumstances that
originally dictated a colony's foundation and respond to new influences and civic
concerns. In spite of the necessary flexibility and variation within individual colo-
nial traditions as they develop over time, an overall narrative pattern emerges that
describes the Greek colonial experience in the archaic period as a Delphically
authorized response to civic crisis at home. Each of the first three stages in this
colonial plot (crisis, Delphi, settlement) links up with a cultural metaphor that
addresses the anxieties and conflicts inherent in overseas settlement. These
metaphors describe colonization either as an act of purification (murder), interpreta-
tion (riddles), or civilization (marriage). Now that we have sketched out the "what"
of colonial tales, their narrative pattern and metaphors, we must ask the next ques-
tion—how are colonial traditions circulated? What are the poetic and cultural con-
texts suitable for telling the tale of a city's colonial origins? Choral poetry, due in
large part to its civic nature and its performance context, creates a particularly
appropriate setting for staging the story of a city's origins. Using Hieron of Syra-
cuse's colonization of Aetna and the art and literature that celebrate the foundation
as a kind of "generic test laboratory," this chapter will explore Greek tragedy and
epinician poetry as two specific genres of choral poetry that accommodate colonial
discourse within their own poetic arenas.
Any discussion of how colonial discourse operates in situ is likely to be frus-
trated by two facts. First, although foundation tales were popular throughout Greek
literature, most of those that survive come to us secondhand, separated from their
original poetic context. Second, since there was no specific genre of colonization
poetry in the archaic period, tales of colonial foundations find their way into many
different kinds of poetic contexts. The themes and conventions of colonial dis-
83
84 Texts in Context
course inevitably shape and are shaped by those of the genre in which they are
embedded, and in most cases we can never know the details of how this bilateral
negotiation works. We saw in the first chapter, for example, that Athenaeus, in the
third century C.E., preserves an anecdote from Archilochus about a certain Aethiops,
a member of Syracuse's colonial expedition who was such a glutton that for a mere
honey cake he bartered away the allotment of land that he was due to receive upon
arrival.1 Nothing survives, however, from the Archilochean corpus to show exactly
how he incorporated this anecdote into its original poetic context. Was it part of a
longer narrative poem specifically about the foundation of Syracuse? Or did it
serve as a biting characterization of a greedy man in a satiric context? All we can
say is that Archilochus wove colonial traditions into his poetic texts. The same lim-
itation also applies to the tantalizingly brief fragments or mere references to colo-
nial works by archaic poets such as Xenophanes or Mimnermus.2
A passage from The Birds by Aristophanes, a play that parodies a city founda-
tion, provides some insight into the kinds of generic contexts that were known for
embedding colonial legends. Once Peisthetaerus founds the new city of Cloudcuck-
ooland, a poet immediately appears on the scene to sing songs in honor of the new
city:
I have composed melic songs for your Cloudcuckooland, many and

beautiful cyclic songs, both partheneia and the kind of songs Simonides
sings. (917-19)
This passage confirms our suspicion that no specific genre of foundation poetry
existed before Hellenistic times, for the poet is prepared to sing a wide variety of
songs in celebration of the foundation of Cloudcuckooland—melic poetry, cyclic
songs, partheneia, Simonidean specials. In honor of Peisthetaerus, founder of the
new city, he proceeds to sing an identifiable parody of a Pindaric hyporcheme that
celebrates Hieron as the founder of Aetna, and a few lines later, he refers to his song
as a "riiv8ap£?ov £'noc;."3 Partheneia, cyclic songs, the kind of poetry that
Simonides and Pindar compose—these are all choral songs, and I want to suggest
that choral poetry, especially the epinician ode and tragedy, provides the kind of
civic, performance context well suited to the ongoing reenactment and public nego-
tiation of the story of a city's origins.4 A close look at Hieron's colonization of
Aetna will allow us to talk more specifically about how these choral genres interact
with colonial discourse, for this may have been the most celebrated city foundation
ever.
Hieron was one of the four sons of Deinomenes, brother to the famous Gelon,
who together with Theron of Acragas defeated the Carthaginians at the battle of
Himera in 480. Hieron was made ruler of Gela while Gelon ruled at Syracuse; he
then succeeded his brother as tyrant of Syracuse in 478, overcoming the claims of his
other brother, Polyzelus. Two years later, in 476, Hieron decided to found a city of
his own, and Diodorus of Sicily gives us the following account of the foundation:
Hieron and Aetna 85
Hieron removed the Naxians and the Catanians from their cities and installed his
own settlers, having gathered five thousand from the Peloponnesus and an addi-
tional five thousand from Syracuse. He then changed the city's name from Catana
to Aetna, and he apportioned this land, adding to it much of the neighboring terri-
tory, to the entire sum of ten thousand settlers. He did this both because he was
eager to have deserving help ready at hand for any need that might arise and so
that from this new city of ten thousand men, he would receive heroic honors.
(Diod. 11.49)
Indeed, as Diodorus tells us later in his account, when Hieron died eleven years
later, he did in fact receive heroic honors since he was the founder of a city (KOU
Tifjwv qpwiKwv ETUXEV. we; av KTiaTqc; y£yovw<; Tqc; noAECAx;).5
Although this is a fifth-century colonial foundation, Hieron adheres closely to
the model and duties of an archaic founder or oikist. He chooses the site, appor-
tions allotments of land for the settlers, and names the city. Diodorus makes it clear
that in return for these colonial duties, he, like Battus of Cyrene or Phalanthus of
Tarentum, expects to enjoy heroic honors after death—the cult of the founder.
Hieron also takes full advantage of the many representational strategies available to
celebrate and consolidate a colonial foundation, especially poetry. Although
Diodorus characterizes Hieron as a violent, greedy man—the very antithesis of a
civilized gentleman—we hear that the tyrant invited the most famous and successful
poets of his time to his court.6 Aelian tells us that Hieron, like his brother Gelon,
initially lacked culture (apouooTOToc;), but that he (unlike Gelon) took advantage
of his sickness to become educated and eventually became the most civilized
(|JOUOIKGOTC<TO<;) of men.7 Pindar, Bacchylides, Simonides, and Aeschylus all com-
posed poetry at the tyrant's court, and much of it, as we will see, celebrated the col-
onization of Aetna and promoted Hieron's new and powerful status as city founder.
But Hieron did not rely upon the poetic media alone to broadcast his fame; he had a
coin minted in honor of the new city; vase paintings portrayed scenes from Aeschy-
lus' play, and the new founder's name was called aloud in victory celebrations at
the Panhellenic games. Hieron put on a truly spectacular public show, and so
before focussing on choral poetry as an effective medium for circulating colonial
traditions, let us take a look at the range of publicity he commanded in honor of his
newly founded city.
First the visual representations of Aetna's foundation. Vase paintings survive
which portray the city's foundation as the rape of a local nymph, Thalia, by an
Olympian deity, Zeus.8 The most detailed and iconographically interesting version
appears on an amphora from Paestum9 (Figure 5.1). The scene shows a fierce eagle,
his powerful wings spread in flight, carrying off the nymph, here named Thalia, his
claws around her waist. A radiant arc spans the air between his wings, imitating the
crown worn by Thalia. Representations of plant life indicate that this is an outdoor
scene. There is an altar on the left; on the right, we see a geometrically designed
box, a ball, and a young boy (a satyr?) wearing a wreath.10 The iconographical details
combine to suggest that this is an erotic scene. The rape of Thalia as she plays out-
doors reminds us of Persephone's similar rape at the hands of Hades; the ball she may
have just been playing with evokes Nausicaa's sexually charged encounter with
Odysseus on the island of Phaeacia." Thus the vases portray visually the same see-
86 Texts in Context
Figure 5.1. Zeus raping Thalia. Neck amphora from Paestum, ca. 330-310 B.C.E. After Sir
William Hamilton's Collection of Engravings from Ancient Vases, vol. 1, plate 26. (Photo
courtesy of the Virginia State Library and Archives. Vase itself now lost.)
nario we have seen at work in literary representations of colonial foundations. Rape

and marriage imagery describes colonization as a kind of divine conquest—as Zeus
takes possession of the local nymph, so Hieron gains control of her land.12
Zeus and his eagle, the quintessential symbols of hegemonic power, also appear
on a coin that Hieron had minted for his new city, a silver Attic tetradrachm13 (Fig-
ure 5.2). It is important to remember that in its initial stages, Greek coinage was not
primarily a commercial tool, but rather, like poetry, a medium for forging and com-
memorating a city's civic identity.14 In fact, if we "read" this coin together with
Pythian 1, a poem "minted" for Hieron by Pindar at the same time, we will find the
same images and tropes emblazoned on both. First the coin: the obverse reads
AITNAION and shows the head of a bald Silenus wreathed with ivy; beneath him is
Hieron and Aetna 87
Figure 5.2. Zeus Aetnaeus. Silver Attic Tetradrachm (Reverse), ca. 476-461 B.C.E. Brus-
sels, Coin Cabinet of the Royal Library. (Photo courtesy of the Royal Library.)
a scarab beetle. The reverse has Zeus Aetnaeus seated on a throne covered by an
animal skin. One hand rests on an ivy staff; in the other he holds a winged thunder-
bolt. Nearby, an eagle with closed wings is perched atop a pine tree. Indeed, the
coin is busy with images which, in a manner very similar to that of the poetry
Hieron commissioned, invoke Zeus as the city's patron deity and reinforce the
details of Aetna's foundation and cultural heritage.15 Zeus Aetnaeus is present here
not in the shape of an eagle but accompanied by the noble bird; he is shown seated,
thunderbolt in hand, on a throne covered by a lion skin. The civic currency of the
coin is thus guaranteed by such an overabundance of symbols for sovereignty. At
the same time, the coin pays homage to the local characteristics of this land—its
vines and pine trees, the Silenus and the scarab beetle. It is indeed a representa-
tional masterpiece.
Hieron, in his role as city founder, also competed successfully in the Panhel-
88 Texts in Context
lenic games, and the victory celebration itself was as much a source of public dis-
play as the coins he had minted or the choral performances we will look at in a
minute. In addition to the celebrations that took place at the games, upon returning
home, the victorious athlete was met outside his city and led as part of a magnificent
procession through the main streets and into the center of the city, the agora.
Diodorus tells us that Exainetus, a Acragantine victor, was escorted by three hun-
dred pairs of white horses.16 The victory was then formally declared, perhaps in the
agora, and honors bestowed upon the victor. The crown, symbol of the athlete's
victory, was dedicated to a local god or hero, and the celebrations concluded with a
banquet.17 Hieron's victory in the chariot race at the Pythian games in 470, then,
provides him with this highly public opportunity to celebrate his newfound status as
city founder both in the international milieu of the games themselves and again
upon his triumphal return home.
Vase paintings, coins, victory celebrations— we have not yet considered the
poetic celebrations, and the extent to which Hieron publicized his role as city
founder is truly amazing. In addition to reflecting Hieron's wealth and love of
fame, this extensive public show reminds us that the power and significance of a
colonial founder continue to thrive as part of the Greek civic mentalite long after the
archaic colonization movement has ended. Now let us turn to the poetic representa-
tions of Hieron's city foundation and issues of genre; Aeschylus, Simonides, and
Pindar all celebrated the colonial moment in choral song.
According to the anonymous life of Aeschylus, the tragic poet went to Sicily,
and while Hieron was founding Aetna, Aeschylus produced the Aetnaeae "to be an
omen of good luck for the settlers of the city."18 The play has not survived intact,
but we do have a four-line fragment, recorded by Macrobius, which alludes to a pair
of Sicilian deities and includes exactly the kind of bilingual, etymological wordplay
that we have come to associate with colonial representation. Macrobius explains
that the Palici are local gods worshipped in Sicily and that Aeschylus (practically
Sicilian himself) was the first to give an etymological interpretation of their name in
his verses.19 The etymology hinges on the story of their birth, which we just looked
at in the previous chapter: a local nymph, Thalia, was made pregnant by Zeus and
hid her pregnancy (through fear of Hera's wrath) beneath the earth.20 When it came
time for her to give birth, the earth opened up, and the two children emerged. As
part of this narrative, Aeschylus explains their name, the Palici, as follows:
A. What name then will mortals give to them?

B. Zeus bids [us] to call them the holy Palici.
A. And does the name of the Palici remain well chosen?
B. Yes, for they have returned from the darkness into the light.
(Saturn. 5.19.24 = F 6 Radt)
And so, embedded within a typical colonial narrative (Olympian god rapes local
nymph) lies a bilingual, etymological pun which is also typical of archaic colonial
Hieron and Aetna 89
discourse. Aeschylus provides an explanation for the Sicel name for these twin
gods that makes sense only in the Greek language. Within the dramatic setting of
the Aetnaeae, they are called the Palici precisely because in Greek their name
signifies a return, and this brief four-line fragment provides us with yet another
example of the linguistic appropriation of a local cult.
Diodorus Siculus explains that the Palici were important Sicel gods: twin broth-
ers, considered autochthonous deities by the local populations, their chthonic cult
was located next to volcanic hot springs, a sacred area that surpassed all others in
antiquity.21 Diodorus vividly describes the "craters," which emit extraordinary
streams of hot, sulfurous water from bottomless depths, sending forth a mighty and
terrifying roar. Probably due to its mysterious underworld atmosphere, the sanctu-
ary of the Palici played several important roles in Sicel life. Diodorus explains that
since there is such a powerful divine presence at the sacred area, the greatest of
oaths were sworn there, and those who swore falsely immediately received divine
punishment (certain men lost their sight).22 The Palici sanctuary also provided an
asylum for maltreated slaves, and third, the site functioned as an oracle. Macrobius
tells us that when Sicily was suffering a bad year for crops, the oracle of the Palici
suggested that they sacrifice to the hero Pediocrates, and having done that, they
recovered the fertility of their fields.23 The cult of the Palici was thus a significant
national center of worship for the indigenous Sicels; indeed, the sanctuary played an
important role in the second Sicilian slave rebellion and in the national movement
under the leadership of Ducetius in the mid fifth century.24 We know from Diodorus
that Ducetius, the Sicel leader, founded the city of Palice near the sacred precinct of
the twin gods.25
The Palici, then, were important, autochthonous Sicilian gods, and their cult
was celebrated throughout central Sicily. It seems clear that, just as Macrobius
indicated, Aeschylus, in his play the Aetnaeae, provides a Greek etymology for the
Sicilian name of the twin deities, the Palici.26 We have seen that the technique of
providing a Greek etymology for elements of local topography or cult is quite com-
mon to archaic Greek colonial discourse and that colonization tales, especially those
that incorporate the ambiguous and enigmatic language of the Delphic oracle, like
to build the ambiguity of bilingual puns into their vision of founding a new city. It
is important to recognize Aeschylus' Greek etymology of the Palici, not just as a
linguistic tour de force, but as part of a larger system of cultural appropriation and
representation, one which helps celebrate and legitimate Greek presence in a for-
eign context.27 In good colonial fashion, the Greeks have adapted Sicel legend so
as to adopt the Palici into their own mythological family. In addition to etymologiz-
ing the name, the foundation myth itself, as Aeschylus is said to have told it, hel-
lenizes local tradition. Separated from their native context as autochthonous deities,
the Palici become sons of Zeus, the father of the Olympian gods, and a local nymph,
Thalia or Aetna, the daughter of Hephaestus. The genealogical details, especially
insofar as they are Greek innovations, are important; they specifically relate the rel-
evant figures of Greek mythology (Zeus, Hephaestus) to significant local geographi-
cal features (the craters of the Palici, Mt. Aetna).
The shape of the narrative itself is familiar from colonial traditions as well: an
Olympian god rapes a local nymph who then gives her name to the new city that
emerges as a result of their intercourse. Implicit within this narrative pattern is the
90 Texts in Context
representation of Greek settlement overseas as Greek cultural domination over local

powers. The version that gives Thalia as the name of the local nymph underscores
the blooming, reproductive aspect of her role in the narrative; she is the local repos-
itory for Zeus' Olympian seed.28 In the Aetnaeae, Aeschylus recounts the founding
of Aetna as the marriage of a local nymph and Zeus, and thus the birth of the Palici,
that is, the origin of their cult, is predicated upon the Greek settlement of Aetna.
In addition, Aeschylus' particular etymology of Palici as "those who have
returned" emphasizes the alleged continuity of Greek presence on Sicilian soil.
While this emphasis on cultural continuity is immediately motivated by the violent
and disruptive nature of Hieron's foundation of Aetna, we have seen that the need
to establish prior rights to the land and the illusion of continuous Greek settlement
appear prominently in colonial tales. By linking the foundation of their city to the
labors of Heracles or the Trojan War heroes, the colonists of the archaic period
claim prior rights to the land that they have just settled. In the same way, according
to Aeschylus, the Palici are no longer Sicilian; they have been repatriated as the
sons of Zeus and grandchildren of Hephaestus. Their very name in Greek repre-
sents colonization not as an imperial act but as an inevitable return.
The movement implicit in representing colonization as a return is mirrored by
the five scene changes that take place in the Aetnaeae, for both the changes of scene
and the etymological pun on the Palici emphasize a progession from the colonial
site back to the place of Greek origin.29 The first act takes place in Aetna; the sec-
ond in Xouthia, a territory near the city of Leontini; then the action moves back to
Aetna, then to Leontini, and finally the play concludes in Syracuse. Through this
pointed emphasis on topography, the drama enacts a movement from local, indige-
nous sites to Greek cities—from Aetna the mountain and Xouthia, the pre-Greek
Sicel territory, to Aetna, the Greek city founded by Hieron, and the Chalcidian
colony of Leontini; the curtain then falls in Syracuse, the city where it all began.30
We might consider the implications of this movement in light of a similar change of
setting from Delphi to Athens in the Oresteia.31 In both the final play of the
Oresteia and in the Aetnaeae, the dramatic action returns to the city in which the
play is being performed, and it returns as a means of political legitimation and
explanation. The Oresteia uses the mythical past to legitimate the present; the tril-
ogy establishes a connection between events in the house of Atreus and the politico-
religious institutions of fifth-century Athens. Just as the culmination of the Oresteia
refounds the Athenian court of the Areopagus, the resolution of the Aetnaeae cele-
brates the Syracusan foundation of Aetna.
This reading of the scene changes thus complements the discussion of etymo-
logical puns in colonial contexts. Folk etymologies generate narrative and forge a
useful and relevant connection between word and object. Through the bilingual
pun, the colonial narrative travels from the foreign word and local cult to find mean-
ing in Greek language and mythology. In the same way, then, the geographical
movement in the Aetnaeae shifts the location and focus of the drama from Aetna
and its neighboring Sicel territory back to the theatre in Syracuse and its Greek
audience. The end result of both colonial etymology and Aeschylean drama is the
celebration of a new Greek city on foreign soil.
Before moving on to consider other poetic celebrations of Aetna's foundation, I
Hieron and Aetna 91
would like to take a moment to reflect upon drama as an appropriate poetic context
for colonial representation. A Shakespearean scholar defines drama as "a communal
art by whose means a community 'talks' to itself."32 A successful play, then, is one
in which the communal conversation is truly probing and confronts essential cul-
tural issues and native tensions. Drama in ancient Greece as well provided the com-
munity at large with a forum for exploring and challenging its civic identity. Greek
tragedy was performed as part of a publicly funded ritual; composed for a single
performance as part of a civic festival, the plays were attended by the entire citizen
body.33 These citizens would come to watch and to participate in the latest chapter
of an ongoing (and publicly staged) debate between myth and history. Within the
bounds of the dramatic performance, a community's collective identity would be
taken apart, scrutinized, and then reassembled as part of a cooperative process
aimed at social integration.34
Greek tragedy, then, is very much a civic event, and for this reason, a suitable
context for exploring a city's colonial origins. But even more to the point, drama as
a forum for cultural enactment is the perfect setting for restaging the colonial expe-
rience. In many ways, as Terence Hawkes suggests in a discussion of the The Tem-
pest, colonization and drama are similar acts of civic construction. The colonial
moment, when colonists confront a new and unfamiliar world, is particularly ripe
for theatrical representation, and Hawkes suggests that a colonist is in fact a kind of
dramatist:
He imposes the 'shape' of his own culture, embodied in his speech, on the new
world, and makes that world recognizable, habitable, 'natural', able to speak his
language. Like the gardener, he redeems untouched landscape by imprinting on it
a humanizing art; he brings nurture to nature. Like Adam in Eden, he names
things.35
Playing with language, manipulating it to represent the past so as to make it useful

for the present—these are the tasks of both the colonial narrative and dramatic dis-
course. Colonists settling the New World bring their own language to bear upon
this foreign landscape, and the art of drama can be eminently useful for this project;
it can present events in ways that are persuasive and powerful.36 Drama, in other
words, as an institution that represents and engenders cultural identity, is a kind of
cultural colonization itself, and in this respect the colonial etymology embedded
within the Aetnaeae is in fact emblematic of the play's direction as a whole.
Aeschylus composed the drama in celebration of Aetna's foundation. Enacted
onstage, the colonial enterprise would be brought home to Hieron and the other
spectators—Aetna brought home to Syracuse, the Palici returned from the darkness
into the light. Tragedy, "an involving performance," invites the citizen audience to
witness a reenactment of its civic origins; more important, it allows them to partici-
pate in a public naming of their city.37
Let us turn now to the other poetic treatments of Aetna's colonial origins. An
unfortunately brief but tantalizing testimonium to a poem of Simonides suggests
that he, too, may have celebrated Aetna's foundation. Aelian tells us that
Simonides was one of the poets at Hieron's court, and a scholium to Theocritus
contains a reference to what may have been another poem composed in honor of
92 Texts in Context
Aetna's civic origins.38 The passage explains that the Sicilian mountain, Aetna,
takes its name from Aetna, the daughter of Heaven and Earth (as Alcimus says in
his work on Sicily), and "Simonides says that Aetna judged Hephaestus and Deme-
ter who were competing for the land" (Ii|jcovi5qc; SE A'iTvr|v cpqot <p?vai "hkpaia-
TOV Kai AqpriTpav nEpi Tqc; )(d>pa<; tpioavTac;).39 Admittedly, the reference is
brief and its context elusive, but given Aeschylus' explicitly colonial narrative of
Zeus' rape of the local nymph Aetna, it is not impossible that the Aetna of the
Simonidean poem belongs to the same colonial tradition.40
Several details locate the Simonides fragment in a colonial landscape. First of
all, the cast of characters is familiar: Aetna here must be the eponymous nymph;
she gives her name to the mountain. In the Aetnaeae, Aetna (or Thalia) is closely
linked with the natural elements; in one account, she is the daughter of Hephestus
and an Oceanid. In Simonides, she is the daughter of the archetypal elements of
Heaven and Earth.41 Hephaestus, a Greek god associated with volcanic topography,
is included in Aeschylus' version as Aetna's father; in this passage, he competes
with Demeter for the land. Elsewhere the Greek mythmaking process has extended
the timai and jurisdiction of Hephaestus and Demeter to include Sicily. Hephaes-
tus, as the Greek god of fire, especially metal-working fire, has cults in the volcanic
regions of Asia Minor and Lemnos; it is no surprise then to learn that his forge is
located under Aetna or, as Aeschylus says in the Aetnaeae, that he is Aetna's
father.42 Demeter, goddess of the earth's grain, also has strong connections with the
agriculturally fertile Sicily, and the island even challenged Eleusis' claim to be the
place where Demeter first gave mortals the gift of corn. The area of Enna has
become the legendary site of Hades' rape of Persephone, and in Nemean 1, Pindar
alludes to a tradition in which Zeus gave the island to Demeter's daughter Per-
sephone as a wedding present.43
We can also imagine an aetiologically oriented narrative scenario for this frag-
ment. The eponymous nymph Aetna, symbolic of the local ownership of the terri-
tory, acts as a referee to judge (willingly, we assume) which of the two Greek gods,
Demeter or Hephaestus, will take possession of the land. The motif of two
Olympian gods competing for territory is, of course, a familiar one. Herodotus
refers to the Athenian tradition, portrayed on the West pediment of the Parthenon,
in which Athena and Poseidon compete for Athens, and Erechtheus serves as
judge.44 Apollodorus provides us with further details. In the time of Cecrops, both
Athena and Poseidon resolved to take possession of Attica. Poseidon was the first
to arrive, and striking his trident upon the ground, he produced a sea that is now
called Erechtheis. Athena arrived next and planted an olive tree. When the two
gods contested their possession of the territory, Zeus appointed the twelve gods as
arbiters, and they determined that the land be given to Athena since she had been
the first to plant the olive.45 It is not difficult to imagine that such a plot could be
adapted to the Sicilian soil and form part of a colonial narrative. No matter who
wins the contest, Demeter or Hephaestus, the outcome is the same: a local repre-
sentative of Aetna (an eponymous nymph whose original rights to the land are
indisputable—she is daughter of Heaven and Earth) adjudicates a territory dispute
and deeds ownership of the land to the Greeks. Again, as in Aeschylus' Aetnaeae,
Simonides gives local players bit parts in a Greek imperial narrative. Aeschylus
uses the god-rapes-nymph story line; Simonides adapts a different plot—that of two
Hieron and Aetna 93
gods competing for tutelary rights to important territory.46 The final episode in
either story is the incorporation of local phenomena into the Greek mythological
system and, even more important, Greek control of local land.
Now let us turn to Pindar. Pythian 1 was composed to honor Hieron's victory
in the chariot races in the Pythian games in 470, but as R.W.B. Burton points out,
the poem's real focus is "to give immortal fame to the highest achievements of the
Deinomenid dynasty in Sicily . . . he (Pindar) sees the foundation of Etna as the
establishment of a fresh outpost of the Dorian way of life."47 Indeed, just as
Aeschylus composed the Aetnaeae as an omen of good luck for the citizens of the
new city, Pindar offers his ode to Hieron in celebration of the city's propitious
foundation:
The first grace for seafaring men as they start upon a voyage is for a
fair wind to come as escort. For it is likely that they will come upon a
stronger return also in the end. (33-35)
Pindar thus suggests that as a fair breeze at the start of a sailing expedition bodes
well for its safe return, so the auspicious beginning of Hieron's new city, celebrated
publicly at the Pythian games, is indicative of its continued prosperity.48
Pythian 1 opens with the famous image of the golden lyre, common possession
of Apollo and the violet-tressed Muses. Its music smooths even the feathers of the
eagle that sleeps upon the scepter of Zeus.49 The lyre and the civilizing power of
music set the tone for the theme of order that dominates the rest of the poem. Pin-
dar then tells the tale of Zeus' imprisonment of the hundred-headed monster
Typhon, an enemy of the gods, beneath the crags of Mt. Aetna, and the myth's con-
clusion celebrates Hieron both as Pythian victor and founder of the city that takes its
name from Zeus' famous mountain. The very structure of the Typhon episode is
significant. Pindar tells the tale of the monster's defeat in careful ring composition,
beginning and ending with Zeus, thus embedding the natural phenomenon of Mt.
Aetna spewing forth its volcanic fire within the larger narrative pattern of Zeus'
hegemonic battle with the forces of chaos.50
After a brilliant description of the wondrous volcano itself, Pindar returns to
Typhon, bound under the peaks of Aetna, famed for its pine trees, and finally con-
cludes the myth with the following prayer to Zeus:
94 Texts in Context
May it be pleasing to you, Zeus, who rule this mountain, the brow of a
well-fruited land, whose neighboring city of the same name the glori-
ous founder made famous; at the Pythian racecourse, the herald pro-
claimed it, making his announcement on behalf of Hieron victorious
with the chariot. (29-33)
The prayer to Zeus both brings the circular myth back to its beginning and reaches
out to include Hieron within the scope of Zeus' patronage. In contrast to Typhon,
for whom Zeus has no friendship (pq n£cpiAqi<e, 13), we are led to believe that
Hieron is included within Zeus' bonds of cpiAia. Pindar celebrates Hieron's recent
accomplishments in light of Zeus' theogonic deeds. Zeus, king of the gods,
solidifies his divine rule and creates a state of cosmic law and order when he sub-
dues Typhon and imprisons him beneath Mt. Aetna. Similarly, Pindar suggests,
Hieron constructs a state of civic order when he founds a city with the same name.51
In addition to establishing the framework for reading Hieron's civic foundation
as a mortal imitation of Zeus' consolidation of divine power, the Typhon myth here,
localized in a Sicilian landscape, serves yet another rhetorical purpose within
the broader context of colonial discourse. Just as Aeschylus explains that the
autochthonous Palici are descended from the Greek Pantheon and that their life
story follows typically Greek narrative patterns, Pindar uses a Greek myth here to
embrace and describe the origins of a local topographical feature. The volcanic
mountain's significance is explained in terms of the narrative we know from Hes-
iod's Theogony, which highlights the defeat of the Titans as the critical moment in
the consolidation of Zeus' Olympian rule.52 By locating Typhon's prison in Sicily
beneath Mt. Aetna and making him the irruptive source of the destructive volcano,
Pindar appropriates a local phenomenon and invests it with Greek meaning; further-
more, he includes the colonization of Aetna within the continuing narrative of the
Greek cosmic victory over barbarian chaos.53
At the end of the third triad, Pindar introduces Hieron's son, Deinomenes, who
has been established as the king of the new city; a song must be sung on his behalf
as well. In celebrating the excellence that the Deinomonid family bequeaths from
one generation to another, from father to son, Pindar characterizes the new city of
Aetna similarly as heir to the Dorian way of life, passed down from the mainland
Dorian centers to the colonial cities of Sicily.54 Pindar announces that he must dis-
cover a song dear to Hieron's son, the king of Aetna, for whom Hieron founded that
city according to the Dorian traditions of Hyllus:
The descendants of Pamphylus and the Heracleidae, dwelling beneath

the crags of Mt. Taygetus, wish always to remain Dorians under the
constitution of Aegimius. (62-65)
In addition to celebrating Aetna's foundation as a continuation of the Dorian way of
life, Pindar deploys here the kind of bilingual wordplay Aeschylus used in the Aet-
Hieron and Aetna 95
naeae. The phrase aiei IJE'VEIV "always to remain" becomes a verbal play on the
name of the local river, the Amenes:
Zeus accomplisher, determine that there always be such a portion

beside the water of the Amenes for the citizens and the kings, according
to the true account of men. (67-68)
Pindar translates the local river name, Amenes, into Greek as aid [JEVEIV "always to
remain," and clearly flags the wordplay both through the repetition of the adverb
a lei prior to the proper noun and especially by referring to the "true report of men"
(e - Tu(jov Aoyov av6pconwv). Etymological puns are typically signalled by the use
of adverbs such as 6p9wc; and ETu^cIx;.55 Pindar imposes a Greek translation upon
a local place-name in a manner not unlike the tradition that explains the name of the
Palici as "those who have returned." His particular translation of Amenes as
"always to remain" also provides a sense of continuity and long-standing tradition
to the city's brand new foundation.56
By steeping Pythian 1 in the language and legends of colonization, not only
does Pindar praise Hieron as victor, but more important, he elevates him to the sta-
tus of a founding hero, and we can begin to see how colonial traditions work as part
of a larger epinician strategy of praise. Pindar often invokes local heroic traditions
which will embrace both the victorious athlete and the city his victory helps make
famous.57 He equates the present athletic accomplishment of the victor with the
great mythological events of the city's heroic past. A quick glance at the list of Pin-
dar's victors and their native cities shows that in addition to Hieron, many of his
clients come from colonial cities founded in the archaic period—Arcesilaus and
Telesicrates of Cyrene, Hagesidamus of Western Locri. Since Pindar's method of
praise tends to include the comparison, explicit or implicit, of the victor to an
important mythological or heroic figure associated with his city, when the victor
comes from a colony, colonial legends often replace the ancestral mythology native
to cities in the Greek mainland. In many cases, new colonies lack age-old local
connections to the heroes of traditional mythology, and so Pindar substitutes the
local founding traditions to the same end.
In the odes that draw upon colonial traditions, Pindar suggests that there is an
implicit similarity between colonization and victory at the Panhellenic games, and
he develops this insight by juxtaposing the parallel careers of the founder and the
victor. As we saw in the opening chapter, the founder of a city is a valued, honored
figure; he gives the city its name; he marks out civic boundaries and establishes the
precincts of the gods.58 An athletic victor also contributes to the glory of his city;
he causes its name to be called out in victory at Delphi or Olympia. Pindar spells
out this connection between city founder and athletic victor in Pythian 1, for
Hieron, the victor in the chariot race, was also the founder of the city of Aetna. For
these reasons, as we will see, colonial legends are easily accommodated within the
poetic scheme of the victory ode.59
Indeed the epinician ode proves to be another receptive genre for the singing of
96 Texts in Context
colonial tales. Like drama, epinician poetry entails a choral performance that
allows the community to participate in the victory celebrations.60 The epinician ode
is traditionally performed as part of the ceremony celebrating a victor's return home
to his native city, and this particular ritual occasion provides an ideal public forum
for exploring issues of civic identity as well. As Anne Burnett suggests, since
choral rituals bring the mythic past to bear upon the present occasion in order to set
the terms and (re)define the boundaries of a cult or practice, they would be espe-
cially appropriate to solidify the foundations of new civic constructions.61 While
archaic poetry was always performed within social settings, choral poetry differs
from monody or elegy in that it literally includes the community within its very per-
formance.62 The poet's role is that of teacher; his poetry transmits a society's ethi-
cal value system, and the community participates in this civic education both as
audience and insofar as it is represented in the composition of the chorus itself.63
Claude Calame's study of the function of the chorus in archaic Sparta has shown
that the composition of adolescent choruses depends narrowly on the political struc-
tures of the city; they represent the social body.64 These same observations would
undoubtedly apply to the civic choruses that performed epinican odes as well. Par-
ticipation in a chorus is thus a public activity; it is the job of the chorus to represent
the city at large.65
In addition to its performance mode, epinician poetry also shares with drama a
primary concern with the larger civic community of the victor. We have already
remarked that epinician poetry is performed at celebrations designed to reincorpo-
rate the victor into his community, and Pindar will often explicitly state that the city
actively takes part in the victory celebrations.66 The civic nature of the epinican
ode, however, differs in important ways from that of drama; it focuses more nar-
rowly on the special and potent relationship between the individual victor and his
city. The occasion for the performance of a victory ode is the victor's triumphant
return home, and his victory causes his name to be celebrated in conjunction with
that of his city. Precisely because of his victory in Panhellenic competition, a
returning athletic victor bestows a certain talismanic power, or kudos, upon his
native city; the victory ceremony negotiates this sharing of power between the vic-
tor and the community at large, and epinician poetry celebrates the moment.67 The
transfer of symbolic power from an individual to his city is a critical step in the
colonial process as well, and the victory celebration provides an appropriate occa-
sion for its commemoration. To see how this works, let us return briefly to a pas-
sage from Pythian 1 that we discussed earlier: Pindar's prayer to Zeus on behalf of
Hieron as both founder and victor:
Hieron and Aetna 97
It is significant that Hieron has himself announced at the games as Hieron of Aetna,
rather than as Hieron of Syracuse, as he is in Bacchylides' ode for the same victory.
Thus, within this ritual context, victory for Hieron in the Pythian games includes a
public celebration of his role as founder as well. Note the use of the verb KuSouvco
here it is by virtue of his role as a colonial founder (KAsivoc; okioTrip) that Hieron
has acquired the talismanic power (kudos) which he bestows upon the city
(£Ku8av£v noAiv) within the context of his athletic victory. This precise formula is
traditionally used to commemorate the athletic victory itself, but here Pindar substi-
tutes the act of foundation for victory.68 Colonial founders, as Hieron knows, wield
extraordinary ritual power, and the cult of the founder permanently locates that
power within the city's center. In many ways, the celebration of a city founder and
that of an athletic victor negotiate the same obstacles and achieve the same goal—
they both mark the transfer of power from the individual to the city. In Pythian 1,
Pindar suggests that the victory celebration, complete with its public proclamation
of Hieron and his city, is the ideal context for honoring a city founder; it replicates
the original act of foundation.
The next three chapters will focus more specifically on the interaction between
epinican poetry and colonial discourse. How do the metaphors and narrative
themes of colonial representation contribute to the epinician project? In what ways
does the victory ode provide the occasion for singing a colony's founding song?
But first, there is one last poetic celebration to mention in our survey of Aetna's
colonial repertoire. Perhaps the most bold in its praise of Hieron as colonial
founder, the following fragmentary hyporcheme identifies the cult of the founder as
the source of his never-ending fame:
. . .
Understand what I say to you, eponymous father of very divine holy

rites, founder of Aetna.
* * *
For he wanders from his people among the Scythian pastures, he who
does not have a home borne upon wagons goes without fame.
(Pindar Fr. 105aandb) 69
In the first part of the poem as it is preserved, Pindar links Hieron as founder with
the larger civic community. Pointedly omitting the tyrant's proper name, Pindar
suggests that Hieron was born to receive heroic honors by deriving his name etymo-
logically from the very celebrations his colonial foundation of Aetna was intended
to secure (£a6£wv kpwv ETTGOVUIJE). Hieron is thus invoked simultaneously as
Aetna's city founder and as the eponymous namesake of the heroic cult enjoyed by
98 Texts in Context
a city's oikist. City founders are buried in the very heart of the city, the agora, and
from that focal point, the cult of the founder helps the city determine and celebrate
its civic origins and identity. The founder's cult as Hieron's source of fame, an icon
of fixity and centrality, is starkly contrasted in the second part of the poem with the
apolitical mobility of an anonymous, homeless man, wandering among the Scythian
pastures; he goes without fame (a<XEr|c;). Far from receiving the important politi-
cal honors that Hieron enjoys, this man is separated from his fellow citizens and
wanders among the Scythians, a people famous for their nomadic, anticivic
lifestyle. Herodotus explains that the Scythians lack cities or fortified sites; they
carry their houses with them and shoot bows from horseback. They do not farm but
depend on herds of cattle for their livelihood.70 Unlike Greek colonial founders,
Scythian kings are not buried in a central spot, but at the furthest limits of their sub-
ject nations and in secret locations.71 This anonymous man thus finds himself in a
landscape marked by its lack of political focus, and Pindar suggests that his absence
of fame is directly related to this nomadic lifestyle. Hieron, on the other hand, as
city founder, derives his renown specifically from his centrally located cult. His
name, thanks to the poetic efforts of Aeschylus, Simonides, Bacchylides, and espe-
cially Pindar, will be permanently rooted in the city's psyche.
Notes
1. Ath. 4.167d.
2. Cf. Schmid 1947 for these and other references to archaic poetry that he believes to be
evidence for a specific genre of foundation poetry in the archaic period.
3. Ar. Av. 926-30.
4. I certainly do not mean to claim that choral poetry is the only poetic context available
for colonial discourse. To judge from the fragments and testimonia that survive, elegy, cata-
logue, and genealogical poetry seem to have included colonial themes as well. However, the
colonial poetry that survives at length from the archaic period appears in choral contexts, and
this chapter suggests that the performance and civic contexts of choral poetry might explain
this particular choice of genre. It is unclear what kind of poetry is meant here by Ku<Aia; it is
most often read as a reference to the circular choruses of dithyrambic poetry; cf. Ar. Nub.
333. On the circular nature of the dithyramb, see Pickard-Cambridge 1962 p. 32; Calame
1974 pp. 77-84.
5. Diod. 11.66.4. See also Strab. 6.2.3.
6. Diod. 11.67.4.
7. Aelian Varia Historia 4.15; he names Pindar, Bacchylides, and Simonides among the
poets invited to educate Hieron. Cf. Pind. Ol. 1.13-16 for musical culture at Hieron's court.
8. This particular colonial tradition comes from Aeschylus' Aetnaeae, and we will look
more closely at the play itself later in the chapter. The scene is represented in monumental
sculpture as well. For reproductions and discussion, see Kossatz-Deissmann 1978.
9. Kossatz-Deissmann 1978 p. 36 = K 10.
10. The altar is perhaps that of the Palici; cf. Kossatz-Deissmann 1978 p. 39. An Apu-
lian amphora (K9; p. 34) that portrays roughly the same scene is remarkable for its exuberant
portrayal of local flora.
11. For the erotic connotations of this scene, see Kossatz-Deissmann 1978 pp. 38-39.
12. Cf. Carroll 1989; she discusses visual representations of rape in the Renaissance
within their broader political context.
Hieron and Aetna 99
13. Cf. Head 1887 pp. 114-15; Hill 1906 pp. 43-45.
14. Finley 1968 p. 37; Austin and Vidal-Naquet 1977 pp. 56-58. Cf. Martin 1985 for a
study of coinage and sovereignty in the classical period. He challenges the assumption that
coins are primarily symbols and reasserts the economic motives behind their use. It is not
clear whether this correction holds true for the archaic period as well, but even if so, the eco-
nomic function of coins does not necessarily preclude their symbolic value.
15. For the presence of beetle on Aetna, see Ar. Pax 73 and scholia; for pine trees, cf.
Diod. 14.42^4; Find. Pyth. 1.53; for the vines, cf. Strab. 6.2.3.
16. Diod. 13.82.
17. Crotty 1982 pp. 104-38; Slater 1984 pp. 244-47 and bibliography in note 1; Kurke
1993.
18. Vita 9 = TrGF vol. 3, ed. Radt (p. 34): eA9wv (sc. Aeschylus) roivuv ei<; IiKsXfav
'lepoovoc; TOTE Tqv Arrvqv KT!£OVTCK; erreSei^ccTo TC«; Arrvac; O|GOVI£O|JEVO<; (Mov
aya96v ToTc; ouvoi<i£ouai Tr|v noAiv.
19. For a discussion of this and other etymologies in Aeschylus, see Kranz 1933 pp.
287-89. On Aeschylus' "Sicilian" connection, see Stanford 1937-38; Cataudella 1963; Her-
ington 1967. For a more skeptical view of our ability to judge the Sicilian influence on
Aeschylus' language, see Griffith 1978.
20. Servius, in his commentary on Aen. 9.581 (pp. 127-28 Radt), tells a similar story of
the birth and subsequent naming of the twin gods, but in his account, the nymph is called
Aetna. Stephanus of Byzantium 496.7 Meineke (F 7 Radt) explains that Aetna is the daugh-
ter of Hephaestus. He traces this genealogy to Aeschylus and this play; he also notes that
Silenus, in his Sicelica, makes Aetna the daughter of an Oceanid and Hephaestus.
21. Diod. 11.89. Cf. Polemon at Macrob. Saturn. 5.19.26: oi 5c DaXiKoi
npooayopEuopEvoi napa TOM; syxtopioic; auToxQovEc; Gsoi vo|jl£ovrai. For general dis-
cussions of the Palici sanctuary and its religious functions, see Freeman 1891 vol. 1 pp.
166-69; 517-30; Croon 1952. For an extremely comprehensive discussion of all aspects of
the Palici, see Ziegler/?£ s.v. Palikoi, cols. 100-123.
22. Diod. 11.89.5. Cf. Macrob. Saturn. 5.19.20-21 and Polemon at Macrob. 5.19.28-30.
23. Slave asylum: Diod. 11.89.6-8. Oracle: Macrob. Saturn. 5.19.30.
24. Slave rebellion: Diod. 36.3.3 and 7.1; Ducetius: Diod. 11.88.6.
25. Diod. 11.88.6. Archeological evidence confirms the ancient testimonia that an
important Sicel cult of the twin gods, the Palici, was located in the region of Palagonia in
central Sicily. Cf. Gentili 1962 p. 14; Pelagatti 1966 pp. 106-7; Messina 1976 pp. 666-67.
26. Croon 1952 p. 119 has dismissed this etymology as "merely an aetiological story to
explain the name Palici which they [the Greeks] derived wrongly omo TOU rraXiv iKEoGai.'"
It is precisely for this reason, however—because it is an aetiological etymology—that the
Aeschylus fragment makes sense. Placed within the larger context of colonial representation,
this etymology shows how the Greeks constructed the reality of overseas colonization for
themselves.
27. Moreover, as Ziegler points out RE col. 118, "Deutlich ist die ganze Geschichte aus
der Etymologie 'die Wiederkommenden' herausgesponnen."
28. Cf. Pindar Ol. 1 where the foundation of Rhodes is described as the sexual union of
Helius and the local nymph, Rhodes.
29. A papyrus fragment recording the hypothesis of the play reveals this surprising fact.
Cf. P. Oxy. 2257 Fr. 1 = p. 127 Radt.
30. For this inteipretation, see La Rosa 1974 pp. 151-63. See also Giangiulo 1983 pp.
820-33.
31. As C. J. Herington (1990) suggested in a paper entitled "The Syracusan Patronage of
Drama in the Early Fifth Century B.C."
32. Hawkes 1973 p. 1. Cf. Redfield 1990 p. 318: "Everywhere the theater is the most
100 Texts in Context
social of the arts, since it not only concretely represents social action but is itself in perfor-
mance a social event."
33. Cf. Plato Symp. 175 e. Important civic celebrations took place as well at the festivals
at which tragedies were performed: the exhibition of tribute from Athens' allies, the parade
of war orphans raised at public expense. See Goldhill 1990; Longo 1990.
34. For more detailed and substantive discussions of the nature of Greek tragedy along
these lines, see the essays collected in Winkler and Zeitlin 1990 (especially Longo, Zeitlin,
Winkler, Goldhill, Redfield); Vernant and Vidal-Naquet 1981. The fact that the Aetnaeae
was performed in Syracuse, not Athens, does not affect the civic nature of its performance.
Lloyd-Jones 1983 pp. 99-103 has suggested that another Aeschylean fragment (in which
Dike appears in person) may also belong to the Aetnaeae, and in this fragment Dike
addresses the chorus, which "seems to consist of citizens of a city to which she has been
sent." Thus the civic nature of tragedy and the integral role of the chorus in exploring its
civic identiy would seem to be very much at work in Syracuse too.
35. Hawkesl973p. 211.
36. In concluding his discussion, Hawkes (1973 p. 212) inverts his own metaphor:
"Similarly, the dramatist is metaphorically a colonist. His art penetrates new areas of experi-
ence, his language expands the boundaries of our culture, and makes the new territory over in
its own image. His 'raids on the inarticulate' open up new worlds for the imagination."
37. Longo 1990 p. 17: "The dramatic contest remained an involving performance, func-
tioning solely in the presence of and by virtue of the civic corporation, and unthinkable out-
side that place and that time."
38. Cf. Podlecki 1979 for arguments against Simonides' presence at Hieron's court. He
does not, however, discuss this fragment. See also Huxley 1978.
39. F. 552 PMG.
40. I think it is also likely that Simonides' treatment of the foundation of Aetna took the
form of choral poetry as well, but of course, given the nature of the fragment, it is impossible
to know for sure.
41. Cf. Cyrene in Find. Pyth. 9, an eponymous nymph who is similarly related to Ocean
and Earth.
42. Hephaestus' forge at Aetna: Aesch. Prom. 368-69. Cf. Callim. Hymn to Artemis
47-61; Aen. 8.416-23.
43. Find. Nem. 1.12-18. Cf. scholia at line 17: SOKE? 6e auiqv 6 ZEUC; eic; TOV yajjov
nXouTcovoc; TOK; avoiKaAunTqpioic; TQ OepaecpovQ 6copr|aao6o(i.
44. Hdt. 8.55; notice the verbal similarities with the Simonides: Xoyoc; napa
'A9r)vaiwv riooeiSE'wva TE <ai 'AOqvaiqv EpiaavTac; nspi rqc; X^PO^ H a P T upiO( 0£'o6ai.
45. Apollod. 3.14.1. Cf. Plut. Themist. 19; Paus. 1.24.5; 1.26.5. According to Pausa-
nias (2.22.4; 2.15.5), Poseidon competed unsuccessfully with Hera as well for possession of
Argos.
46. Pindar, in Nemean 1, alludes to yet another narrative plot—that of land given as a
wedding present. Cf. Pythian 9 for this same plot.
47. Burton 1962 p. 91. Bacchylides also composed an ode celebrating this same victory,
Bacchylides Ode 4, but this poem is very short and seems from the specific allusions to Del-
phic landscape to have been performed at Delphi. Bacchylides refers to Hieron of Syracuse,
not Aetna, and this poem does not contain any references to Hieron's status as colonial
founder. The absence of any reference to Aetna may be explained by its performance at Del-
phi instead of in Sicily where the chorus would reflect the city's citizenship.
48. Cf. Kurke 1991 p. 46: "Hieron's proclamation of his newly founded city at the site
of the games, like a favoring breeze when one sails out, augurs a better return for the city's
voyage into the future."
Hieron and Aetna 101
49. The eagle immediately brings to mind the bird with similarly furled feathers perched
upon the pine tree emblazoned on the coinage of Aetna.
50. Burton 1962 p. 98 notes the ring composition here.
51. See Vernant 1982 pp. 108-10 about the significance of Zeus' battle with the Titans
and the Typhon. "Every victory of Zeus is a creation of the world. The tale of the battle that
pits the two rival generations of Titans and Olympians against each other explicitly evokes
the return of the universe to an original state of inchoate disorder. .. . Zeus' victory puts
everything back in order." See also Trumpf 1958 pp. 129-57 on this poem in particular for a
discussion of how the founding of a Greek city imitates, on some level, the original cosmic
foundation.
52. Hes. Theog. 820-85. It has been suggested that Pindar's treatment of the Typhon
episode here is modelled on a pre-Hesiodic source that may have provided the poet (and
Aeschylus as well) with the geographical details. Cf. Von Mess 1901; Burton 1962 p. 98.
53. Cf. Slater 1984 pp. 257-58. The poem includes other recent historical events that fit
into this paradigm of Greek order defeating barbarian chaos (71-80); most significant per-
haps is the victory over the Carthaginians by Hieron's brother Gelon and Theron at Himera in
480. The fact that this battle in Sicily was syncretized with the Greek defeat of the Persians
at Marathon in the same year shows how powerful this paradigm is in structuring Greek
thought.
54. Cf. Kirsten 1941. He argues that Pindar ties Hieron's foundation of Aetna into the
larger sphere of Spartan political history.
55. See Quincey 1963 for this pun and for a discussion of the terms used to identify ety-
mological wordplay.
56. As Leslie Kurke pointed out to me, it is interesting to note the different orientations
of these two bilingual puns in light of their generic contexts: tragedy looks backward, epini-
cian forward.
57. See, for example, Find. Isthm. 5.34-42; Isthm. 7.1-3.
58. We remember from Diodorus that an important part of Hieron's motivation to colo-
nize Aetna was to be celebrated with a founder's cult, and from our brief review of the poetry
that celebrates that foundation, it appears that Hieron's wish was realized.
59. Pindar uses the colonization legend of Cyrene as the primary myth of three Pythian
odes, and the founding of Rhodes occupies the central myth of Olympian 1. Still other
poems include references to various colonial traditions within a larger mythological frame-
work. Bacchylides also makes use of colonial legends; cf. Ode 11, discussed in Chapter 6.
60. Not all scholars believe that epinician poetry was performed by a chorus. See, for
example, Heath 1988; Lefkowitz 1991 pp. 191-201; Heath and Lefkowitz 1991; counterar-
guments include Burnett 1989; Carey 1989; 1991. It is the communal function of the chorus
and its suitability for staging colonial ideology that I am primarily interested in here, and it is
worth noting that even those who argue against choral performance of the odes believe that
the community participates in other parts of the victory ceremony. See, for example,
Lefkowitz 1991 p. 205.
61. Burnett 1988 p. 141: "These verities would be at their most plangent when cast into
the choral form and sung by many voices from the citizenry, and their consolation would be
at its most effective, since a myth danced out in public could be ingested at once by an entire
community. Instructed by such means in the sacredness of customs peculiar to itself, the city
gained direct experience of its separate unity, even as its festival was infused with the com-
mon Hellenic mythology." Cf. Mullen 1982 p. 55 who characterizes the performance context
of the victory ode, song and dance, as a public gathering intended to visibly reaffirm civic
identity. Pausanias (3.11.9) tells us that the Spartans called the innermost section of their
civic space a xopoq; cf. Calame 1977 p. 277; Nagy 1990a p. 345.
62. For discussions of the different poetic genres and their performance contexts, see
Herington 1985 pp. 3-40; Gentili 1988 pp. 32-49; Nagy 1990a.
63. For further discussion of the pedagogic function of archaic poetry, see Calame 1977
pp. 385-420; Gentili 1988 p. 24; Mullen 1982 pp. 46-89. Herington 1985 pp. 183-85 collects
the ancient evidence for the poet as didaskalos. Calame suggests (1977 pp. 70-74) that the
corporate identity of a chorus is reflected in the tendency to refer to them by a group noun—
the Danaids, the Nereids—which emphasizes their communal family and geographical ori-
gins.
64. Calame 1977 p. 385: "On retrouve done, dans le choeur lyrique lacedemonien, des
representants de 1'ensemble du corps social dirigeant la cite."
65. In the Laws 799 a-b; 828 a-c, Plato explains that in establishing the festivals and
religious ceremonies for a new state, choruses will be chosen to reflect the geographical divi-
sion of the city. Cf. Burnett 1985 pp. 50 and 175 n. 6 for passages where the epinician poet
equates the chorus and the city. Cf. Pickard-Cambridge 1962 pp. 35-37 on the dithyrambic
competition in the Dionysia at Athens: each chorus is drawn entirely from one of the ten
tribes; there are five choruses of men and boys so all ten tribes compete. The chorus leaders,
or choregoi, were chosen by tribal officials, and the victory was primarily that of the tribe.
Cf. Dem. Meid. 5-6. See also Nagy 1990a pp. 364-68. He argues that civic divisions are
reproduced and acted out in the process of establishing and constituting choral performance.
"In sum, the ritual essence of the choral lyric performance is that it is constitutive of society
in the very process of dividing it" (p. 367)
66. For example, Find. Ol. 5.1-8; Ol. 7.93-4; Pyth. 9.73-5; Pyth. 12.1-6; Nem. 2.24-25.
67. Kurke 1993.
68. Cf. Kurke 1993 on the poetic and inscriptional evidence for the victory announcement.
69. For the parody, see Ar. Av. 926-945. Cf. the scholia to Find. Pyth. 2.127: TOV
erriviKov ETTI |jio9co ouvTOât; 6 FlivSapoc; EK rrepiTToC ouvenEpyev OUTCO rrpoTxa
unopXHM 01 ' °u H "PXO' ouvec; - encovupt. Cf. also the scholia to Find. Nem. 7.1; Strab.
6.2.3. For a brief discussion of this fragment, see Liibbert 1886. Again, the genre is choral;
although little is known about the hyporcheme, it seems to have included both song and
dance. Cf. Webster 1970 p. 95; Di Marco 1973-74; Mullen 1982 pp. 13-17; Herington
1985 p. 188; Gentili 1988 p. 24; Nagy 1990a pp. 351-53.
70. Hdt. 4.46.
71. Cf. Hdt. 4.71. First they carry the king's corpse around to all their subject nations,
and then bury him in the land of the Gerrhi who live furthest of those whom they rule. The
average Scythian is not buried either; his nearest relatives carry him around in their wagons
(4.73). For the hidden graves of Scythian kings, see Hdt. 4.127. For the Scythians as "other,"
the paradigmatic opposite of the Greeks in Herodotus' text, see Hartog 1988 pp. 3-206. On
pp. 134-41, Hartog suggests that Herodotus contrasts the Greek (central) burial of its heroes
with a Scythian inversion of that practice along the same lines that I am suggesting for this
Pindar fragment. On pp. 193-94, he refers to this Pindaric hyporcheme and its Aristophanic
parody.
6
Pythian 5: Colonial Founders
and Athletic Victors
Blessed, on the one hand, he lived among men, and then he was a hero honored
by the people. (Find. Pyth. 5. 94-95)
Epinician poetry is a publicly performed celebration of athletic victory. Whether

sung at the games themselves or upon the athlete's return home, the victory ode
plays an important role in the celebrations that unite both athlete and city in praise.
Athletes who compete successfully in the Panhellenic games return home covered
with glory and ready to share their fame with their city. In victory, the athlete, like
other heroic figures, temporarily steps outside the bounds of conventional experi-
ence and thus must be reincorporated into his civic community. In this context, the
victory song both celebrates the victor as he is welcomed home and orchestrates his
reintegration. Pindar's immediate task, working within the epinician tradition, is to
praise a victorious athlete together with his city, and colonial tales—their story pat-
terns and metaphors—adapt easily and fruitfully to the epinican program. Pindar
uses colonial discourse to weave the victor's recent athletic exploits into the larger
fabric of his city's civic identity and cultural memory.
In Pythian 1, as we have seen, Hieron plays the double role of city founder and
athletic victor, and this coincidence highlights the structural similarities between
colonization and victory that Pindar explores further in odes which incorporate
colonial legends in greater detail. Both founder and victor must take risks and
expend effort to be successful in their endeavors; as a result, Pindar describes the
colony or victory that each gains in the end as a reward, or compensation, for his
efforts. Each must leave home and travel to be successful; each gains fame from
excelling or being first. And finally, both the oikist and the victor receive immortal
honors from their respective cities. The oikist is celebrated with the cult of the
founder, and the victor enjoys the immortal fame of Pindar's song. This analogy of
city founder and athletic victor lies at the heart of several other epinician odes as
well, and a close reading of Pythian 5 will begin to demonstrate how the conven-
tions of colonial discourse operate in larger poetic contexts.
103
Pythian 5 celebrates the victory of Arcesilaus, king of Cyrene, in the chariot

race at the Pythian games of 462 B.C.E. with his brother-in-law, Carrhotus, son of
Alexibias, as the charioteer. The ode takes as its primary theme the foundation of
Cyrene by Battus from Thera, and it will be helpful to begin with a brief overview
of the themes and structure of the poem.1 Pindar opens with praise of "great strong
wealth"; when it comes from a god and is combined with a man's own excellence, it
carries many a friendly companion with it. Pindar then refers obliquely to the char-
iot victory itself by mentioning the good weather that the equestrian Castor has shed
upon Arcesilaus' family hearth (1-11).
In the antistrophe, Pindar praises Arcesilaus first as king and then as Pythian
victor. He reminds Arcesilaus that he owes all his good fortune to Apollo and that
he should cherish Carrhotus, his charioteer, most of all his companions, for he
brought home Victory instead of Excuse, the daughter of Epimetheus (12-29). Car-
rhotus was hosted at the Castalian springs and crowns the victor with his success.
Pindar opens the second triad with a detailed description of the chariot which Car-
rhotus dedicated to Apollo after his victory and which hangs in the temple at Delphi
(34-42). The charioteer will receive from Pindar this song in compensation for his
heroic efforts—amid forty chariots, Carrhotus brought his across the finish line
unscathed.
Mention of the charioteer's toil in competition leads Pindar to mention Battus, "a
tower of the city and a most shining beacon to strangers," for no one is without toil.
Pindar alludes briefly to the account of Battus and the founding of Cyrene. With
Apollo Archegetes' help, Battus scared away deep-thundering lions with the sound
of his voice (55-62). Pindar opens the third triad with a celebration of Apollo's
other gifts to mankind—medicine, song, prophecy. Through his oracular center at
Delphi, Apollo settled the offspring of Heracles at Argos, Pylos, and Sparta. Men-
tion of Sparta causes Pindar to recall that the founders of Cyrene were originally
Dorian; the Aegeidae left Sparta for Thera and finally settled Cyrene (63-76).
Pindar then sings of the great Dorian festival of Apollo Carneius and connects it
variously to the Dorian invasion, to a cult of the sons of Antenor (exiles from Troy),
and to the founding of Cyrene (77-88). Next follows a list of Battus' accomplish-
ments as founder and mention of his ultimate reward: heroic honors and a burial at
the edge of the agora. Pindar offers his song to Arcesilaus' ancestors as a funeral
offering to all the dead kings of Cyrene. He then reminds Arcesilaus that he
receives this song in compensation for the expense of victory (89-107). A brief
section praising the skills of Arcesilaus follows together with a conventional clos-
ing prayer to Zeus for additional victories, especially one at Olympia (108-24).
The primary narrative section of Pythian 5 appears almost exactly in the middle
of the ode. Pindar gives us a telescoped account of Battus and the foundation of
Cyrene:
Pythian 5 105
That man even deep-roaring lions fled from in terror when he brought
forth for them his voice from across the sea. Apollo Archegetes gave
the beasts this terrible fear so that his plans, through oracles, for the
steward of Cyrene would not be unfulfilled. (57-61)
In this brief and cryptic passage, Pindar alludes to Battus' founding of Cyrene; it is
a story familiar to us from Herodotus, but the epinician poet adds some new and
significant details. We know from Herodotus that Battus consulted Delphic Apollo
about his stuttering voice, and in response, Apollo advised him to found a colony in
Cyrene.2 While this Delphic consultation hovers beneath the surface in this passage
as well, prominently placed is an element not found in Herodotus' account, deep-
roaring lions. Lions—their defeat certainly symbolic of the larger domination of
Gyrene's indigenous occupants—appear in Pindar's Pythian 9 version of Gyrene's
colonization as well, and Pausanias records a Cyrenean folk story in which Battus,
walking in the deserted outskirts of Cyrene, met a lion and in terror cried out so vio-
lently that he never stammered anymore.3 In this poem, however, Battus scares
away lions with his "voice from across the sea," and Pindar conflates Apollo's colo-
nization oracle which Battus would have brought with him across the sea with the
stutter which Herodotus tells us he consulted Apollo at Delphi to cure.4 The use of
yXooooav certainly suggests the phonetic difficulty that caused Battus to consult the
Delphic oracle. Yet the colonial context of the passage as well as the subsequent
mention of Apollo and oracles undeniably prepares the audience to expect an allu-
sion to the Delphic oracle that dictated the expedition. It is, after all, in his role as
Archegetes that Apollo helps Battus put the lions to flight, and as Archegetes,
Apollo traditionally oversees colonial activity through his oracle at Delphi.5 A third,
and equally important, dimension to the overseas voice is the foreign sound of the
language that Battus speaks, foreign at least to the ears of the local Libyan lions.6
Such an allusion, a nice twist on the more familiar formulation whereby every lan-
guage not Greek is foreign or barbarian, privileges the Greek language in its tri-
umph over local fauna.7 All three possible referents for the overseas voice—Battus'
stutter, Apollo's oracle, the Greek language—combine to sanction the Greek rights
to the Libyan land.
Both Battus and Arcesilaus are central figures in Cyrenean civic life, the former
as founder and king, the latter as victor and king, and Pindar elaborates upon the
similarities between victor and founding hero throughout Pythian 5. In the opening
section, for example, Pindar praises Arcesilaus as a king—an admirable privilege
that belongs to his family:
Wise men, you know, bear even god-given power better, and much
prosperity surrounds you as you go with justice. And, on the one
hand, this is because you are king; the inherited power [eye] of great
cities holds this most awe-inspiring honor, mixed with your intelli-
gence. (12-19)
When Pindar addresses Arcesilaus as a king wielding his family's right to rule, he
obliquely alludes to the tradition that explains the name of Gyrene's founder, "Bat-
tus," as the Libyan word for king. In concluding the Theraeans' account of the foun-
dation of Cyrene, Herodotus tells us that Battus' name has two possible derivations:
In time a son was born, who lisped and stammered, and this child—according, at
any rate, to what the Theraeans and the Cyreneans say—was given the name Bat-
tus. My own view, however, is different. I think his name was changed after he
arrived in Libya, where he assumed the name as a result of the oracle given at
Delphi and of the high position he held there—for the Libyans call a king "bat-
tus," and that, I think, is why the Priestess at Delphi, when she spoke the
prophecy, addressed him in the Libyan language, knowing, as she did, that he was
to become a king in Libya. For after he had grown to manhood he went to Delphi
to consult the oracle about his voice and the Pythia gave him the following
response: "O Battus, you have come on account of a voice, but the lord Apollo
sends you to sheep-nourishing Libya to build a city," just as if she said in Greek,
"O King, you have come on account of your voice." (4.155)
Herodotus challenges the customary, Greek etymology of "Battus" from [3c<TTcr
pi(w, "to stutter,'' by suggesting a foreign translation for the proper name.
Although there appears to be no real linguistic evidence for a Libyan derivation for
"Battus," nevertheless, the Greeks, as shown by Herodotus and Pindar, clearly
believed in the "retro-motivated" folk etymology of Battus as Libyan for king.8
Pythian 4, which Pindar composed for the same victory that Pythian 5 com-
memorates, also embeds the foundation of Cyrene within its epinician program, and
in this poem as well, Pindar alludes to the Libyan translation of "Battus" as "king."
The context is the same as in Herodotus' account: Battus has consulted Apollo
about his stuttering voice, and in Pythian 4, Medea reports the words of Apollo to
the future king:
O blessed son of Polymnestus, in this speech, the oracle from the Del-
phic priestess with an automatic response has set you straight. Three
times she hailed you and revealed that it is fated for you to be king at
Pythian 5 107
Cyrene, [you] who asked what would be the recompense from the gods
for your defective voice. (59-63)
Pindar, in fact, provides the very Greek translation that Herodotus suggests for the
Delphic oracle. "Battus, you have come on account of your voice" becomes "you
will become king (jBaoiAe) on account of (as compensation for) your voice." In
Pythian 4, Pindar intertwines both traditions recorded by Herodotus. "Battus" is
both the Greek name of the stutterer who consulted the oracle about his speech
defect and the Libyan term for king. Just as in Pythian 1, here, too, Pindar uses a
bilingual pun associated with a colonial tradition as part of his praise of the victor.
An important strategy of any colonization legend is to legitimate the act of settle-
ment, and according to the bilingual wordplay associated with the Delphic oracle,
only Battus, the stutterer, could become Battus, the founding king of the Libyan
land of Cyrene. This divinely chosen founder then lends his prominent civic status
to Pindar's project of praising the founder's descendant and king, Arcesilaus.
To return to Pythian 5, Pindar first invokes the quality of kingliness as a com-
mon bond between Arcesilaus and Battus. Battus, the founder, was the original
king of Cyrene, and so now, too, is Arcesilaus, his descendant. Pindar's appeal to
Arcesilaus as king is immediately followed by an image that will also link Arcesi-
laus with Battus. Arcesilaus' most revered honor, one he has claimed as his own, is
this auyysvqc; 6cp6aA|j6c;; he is the focal point, the eye, of the city, an inherited
source of guidance. This opthamological image looks ahead to Pindar's introduc-
tion of Battus as a shining eye (6|j|ja TE cpaevvoTaTov):
The ancient prosperity of Battus follows, governing all equally, a tower

of the city and a shining beacon to strangers. (55-57)
Moreover, in addition to sharing the family honor of being king with Battus, Arcesi-
laus, like the founder, has a strong link with Delphic Apollo. He is blessed now
because he has won at the Pythian games, the delight of Apollo:
And you are blessed also now, because you have captured the victory
boast with the horses at Pytho and you have received this celebration of
men, a delight of Apollo. And so do not forget, as you are being
hymned in Cyrene, in the sweet garden of Aphrodite, to acknowledge
the god as chiefly responsible for everything,. . . (20-25)
Arcesilaus can boast victory in the chariot race at Delphi, and he receives a victory
celebration as a result. At this point Pindar warns Arcesilaus not to forget that
Apollo is responsible for all his success. Pindar praises Arcesilaus first for being
king (like Battus, who founded the city of Cyrene) and second for being victorious
in the Pythian games. Both these accomplishments, a city foundation and a Pythian
victory, are intimately connected with Delphic Apollo. Apollo, as Pindar points
out, is the leader of colonies, and the Pythian games are held in his honor at Delphi.
To return again briefly to Pythian 4, Pindar uses this Delphic connection—the coin-
cidence of Apollo as colonization deity and as divine sponsor of the Pythian
games—as a point of transition to the myth from the victory occasion and back
again. The poem opens with a mention of Delphi as the site of both the chariot vic-
tory of Arcesilaus and of the oracle that prompted Battus to found Cyrene:
Today you must stand beside a dear man, the king of Cyrene of good
horses, so that, Muse, celebrating together with Arcesilaus, you can
increase the breath of songs which is owed to the children of Leto and
to Pytho where once with Apollo present, the priestess, seated beside
the golden eagles of Zeus, prophesied that Battus would be the founder
of fruit-bearing Libya, that leaving the holy island, he would found a
well-charioted city on a gleaming white hill,... (1-8)
Pindar calls our attention to the elements of time and place; first, the ode opens with
the necessity of praising the victor "today." Second, he is victorious at that place
where, once upon a time, the priestess told Battus to found the new city. In spite of
the passage of time and a new set of circumstances, Delphi, the oracular seat of
Apollo, is the common ground shared by both victor and founder, and therefore it
provides Pindar, as poet, with a smooth transition from the victory to the myth. Pin-
dar draws on this same convergence of circumstances in Pythian 5 as well. Arcesi-
laus must remember that Apollo is the chief reason, or aition, for his success. The
legendary account of Battus as founding hero of Cyrene becomes more relevant to
the praise of a Delphic chariot victor for this reason, and so Pindar warns Arcesilaus
not to forget that Apollo is the source of all his prosperity.
Another way in which Pindar compares Arcesilaus to Battus is through the con-
vention, common in the odes, of describing fame and victory as the reward or com-
pensation that an athlete receives in return for the toil and effort of competition.9 In
Pythian 5 109
Nemean 1, for example, Pindar explains that great strength is hidden in darkness if
it goes uncelebrated by song:
For great feats of strength that lack song find much darkness, and in the
case of beautiful deeds, we know the mirror [to reflect] in just one way:
if thanks to Mnemosyne of the bright fillet, he finds a reward for his
toils through the glorious songs of poetry. (12-16)'°
Here the mirror imagery underscores the reciprocity between the ordeal of Panhel-
lenic competition and the glorious fame that comes as the reward for such effort. In
Pythian 5, Pindar first applies this motif not directly to the victor, Arcesilaus, but to
Carrhotus, the charioteer. Pindar makes it clear that Arcesilaus himself did not
compete in the chariot race; he sponsored the entry, and Carrhotus, his brother-in-
law, actually drove the chariot.11 It is not unprecedented for Pindar to praise chario-
teers independent of the victor, and the extended celebration of Carrhotus here may
be due to the particular circumstances of the occasion. Carrhotus' victory was so
spectacular—he made it through all twelve turns of the course with chariot
unharmed—that he dedicated the chariot to the god at Delphi. The dedication of a
whole chariot is certainly a conspicuous offering to the god, an extravagant gesture
that reflects the extraordinary nature of the victory. After describing the dedication,
Pindar returns again to the charioteer who made such a gesture possible. Like Arce-
silaus, Carrhotus is blessed, and he receives a memorial of glorious words in return
for his efforts:
And so it is fitting that you meet your benefactor with a willing mind.
Alexibiades [Carrhotus], the fair-haired Graces illuminate you. Blessed
are you who have, after great toil, a memorial of strong words.
(43^9)12
Because of the unique nature of the chariot race, Pindar splits his praise between
Arcesilaus, the victor, and Carrhotus, the chariot driver. Since Carrhotus expended
the physical effort in driving the chariot, Pindar understandably attributes the actual
toil of victory to him. Later, however, he praises Arcesilaus himself in a similar
manner for his monetary expenditures:
He [Arcesilaus] should call upon Phoebus of the golden bow in a song

of young men since he has from Pytho the recompense, beautiful in vic-
tory, of expense, the pleasing song. (103-7)
Again exhorting Arcesilaus to acknowledge Apollo as the source of his good for-
tune, Pindar returns to the image of the victory song as the proper recompense for
competition. Here, as is fitting in an address to the wealthy Arcesilaus, the victory
song comes in exchange for the expense, rather than the physical toil, of com-
peting.13
Pindar then uses this conventional motif of victory as reward for toil as the point
of transition from the "here and now," his praise of the victor and his charioteer at
the Pythian games, to the glorious past, his account of Battus and the colonization
of Cyrene. Not unlike the athlete, the founder receives his colony as a reward for
his risk and trouble. In the Pythian 4 passage quoted above, Battus receives the
colony and kingship of Cyrene as compensation for his defective voice (8uo0poou
cpwvac; ... noiva, 63).14 In Pythian 5, in the section that follows his acknowledg-
ment of Carrhotus' efforts, Pindar introduces a gnomic remark: no one is nor will
ever be without an allotment of trouble (rrovtov 8' ou TIC; arroKAapoc; EOTIV OUT'
eoejoi, 54). The gnome provides the transition from Carrhotus and Arcesilaus to
the description of Battus as the tower of the city and a shining beacon to strangers
(55-57). Implicit is the notion (made explicit in Pythian 4) that Carrhotus and
Arcesilaus receive victory celebrations in return for their athletic and monetary out-
put just as Battus, who also had his share of troubles once upon a time, received the
honor of founding Cyrene in return.
After the victory at Delphi, Carrhotus returns home, and Pindar exploits yet
something else that the Pythian victor and colonial founder have in common—the
journey from Delphi to Cyrene. Carrhotus, standing in for Arcesilaus, has just
made the victorious trip home to the plains of Libya, imitating Battus' original,
founding trip from the oracle of Apollo at Delphi to the site of the new colony. By
embedding Gyrene's colonial tradition into his poem in praise of Arcesilaus'
Pythian victory, Pindar establishes a close bond between founder and victor. Both
men are kings; each owes his fame to Apollo, and each receives honor and fame in
exchange for great effort. In addition, the founder of a colony is celebrated with
special civic honors after death, and Pindar extends this analogy to its logical con-
clusion by including the celebration of the founder's cult within his praise for Arce-
silaus. Pindar first summarizes Battus' duties and rewards as city founder:
Pythian 5 111
He founded greater altars for the gods and established for Apollonian
processions that protect mortals a straightcut level [path] to be a paved
road, resounding with the pounding of horses' hooves; there, having
died, he [Battus] lies apart at the edge of the agora. Blessed, on the one
hand, he lived among men, and then he was a hero honored by the peo-
ple. (89-95)15
As oikist, Battus lived a blessed life among men, and since his death, he has been
honored as a hero. The cult of the founder was celebrated annually with sacrifices
and athletic games; in addition, the oikist was customarily buried in the agora, in the
center of the city. The Greeks normally buried their dead outside the city limits,
and the exception in the case of the founder underscores the nature of his cult as a
civic, not personal, event. The founder's cult is the first independent cult of a new
city, one not imported from the mother city, and therefore it is symbolic of the
city's emerging self-identity.16
Hero cults of many kinds play a prominent role in the epinician odes. Often
Pindar mentions that the games he is celebrating take place at the tomb of a hero.
For example, in Olympian 1, the games take place at the tomb of Pelops.17 Simi-
larly, in Pythian 9, when Telesicrates wins at the games in Thebes, Pindar says that
the tomb of lolaus bears witness to his victory.18 And as we will see in Olympian
7, Diagoras wins at the Tlepolomeia, local games in Rhodes that form a part of the
annual celebration of the founder of Rhodes, Tlepolemus.19 In addition, Pindar
often praises a particular victor with reference to a mythological hero, thus suggest-
ing that the victor will receive from his song a poetic version of the immortality
enjoyed by the heroic figure. To this end, the poet offers his poetry to the victor as
one would offer libations to the cult of a hero.20 In Nemean 3, for example, Pindar
offers his song to Aristocleidas of Aegina as a blend of honey and milk breathed
through Aeolian flutes:
Hail, friend. I send this poetic drink, mixed with honey and white milk,
dew mixed in surrounds it, among the Aeolian breaths of flutes late
indeed. (76-79)21
By postponing the potable noun accompanied by its poetic adjective, Pindar rein-
forces the identification of liquid offering and song. In Isthmian 6, a poem that
opens with an elaborate simile comparing a song for a second victory with the sec-
ond bowl of wine at a symposium, Pindar says that he intends to sprinkle the island
of the Aeacidae with praise:
And you, O sons of Aeacus with golden chariots, I say as I set foot
upon this island, that my most clear promise is to sprinkle it with
praise. (19-21)22
When, as in Pythian 5, the particular hero cult is intimately linked to a city's iden-
tity, this important civic connection extends to the victor as well. As founding hero,
Battus receives libations at his tomb; likewise, Pindar describes his song in praise of
Arcesilaus as a liquid offering to his ancestors:23
Apart, before the houses, are the other holy kings who have come
upon their lot in Hades; they listen with an earthly mind to the great
virtues sprinkled with soft dew and to songs under the streams, their
prosperity and a common joy for their son, and one justly due to Arce-
silaus. (96-103)
The athletic achievement of Arcesilaus is "bedewed" by the victory celebrations,
that is, Pindar's poetry, in order that it be heard by his ancestors. The dead heroes
of Gyrene's past drink in the songs of Arcesilaus' recent athletic success; they are
refreshed by the news.24 Once again the glory and accomplishments of Arcesilaus
as victor are praised in the politically charged context of Battus' achievements as
the founder of his city. Pindar uses the conventional conflation of victory song and
cult offering as a transition from the celebrations of Battus the founder back to the
praise of Arcesilaus. He sharply delineates the two stages of Battus' career within
the bipartite pev . . . 5s construction. He is blessed in life, and he enjoys heroic
honors after death. Implicit is the connection between Battus as founding hero and
Arcesilaus as victor. Like Battus, Arcesilaus, too, is blessed in life (\ja<ap, 20),
and he, thanks to Pindar's victory ode, can look forward to eternal fame similar to
that of a hero. We should keep in mind that the hero cult in question is not for just
any hero but for the founding hero of the victor's city. These are civic celebrations;
they link the victor to the very origins of his city.
In addition to recounting the founding of Cyrene as the central myth of Pythian
5, a narrative that allows Pindar to praise Arcesilaus by comparing him with
Gyrene's colonial founder, Pindar devotes a significant portion of the ode to the cel-
ebration of Apollo Carneius. The role of the Carneian section within Pythian 5 and
its connection to the Battus legend have not been completely understood, and for
Pythian 5 113
this reason, it is worth making a brief detour here to show that it is precisely the
colonial context of the poem that motivates the appearance of Apollo Carneius.
Pindar tells us that Apollo is worshipped as Carneius at a festival which the settlers
from Thera brought with them to Cyrene:
And it is my job to hail the beloved fame from Sparta, being descended
from this place, the men, the Aegeidae, arrived at Thera, my forefa-
thers, not without the gods, but some Fate led them. From that time,
receiving a banquet full of sacrifices, we honor, Apollo Carneius, in
your feast, the gloriously founded city of Cyrene. (72-81)
In this way, Pindar, the poet, allies himself with Arcesilaus, the victor, through their
common worship of Apollo Carneius.25 As Herodotus tells us, the founders of
Cyrene were originally Dorians, and they brought the cult of Apollo with them to
their new city. Cults and religious practices form the basic ties between new
colonies and the cities of mainland Greece, and founding a colony involves finding
new homes for the Greek gods. Callimachus, himself a Battiad, also traces the
Carneian festival from mother city to colony in his Hymn to Apollo:
But I call you Carneius, for such is the way of my forefathers. Sparta,
O Carneius, was your first foundation; next, Thera, and third, the city of
Cyrene. (71-73)26
Colonization forges this common bond between the Dorians of Thebes and Cyrene,
and the Dorian connection helps Pindar as a Theban poet praise the Cyrenean vic-
tor. In addition, close analysis of the context in which Pindar introduces the
Carneia into Pythian 5—specifically his association of the festival with the founda-
tion of Cyrene—provides valuable confirmation of the structural similarities
between colonization and purification within colonial ideology. Pindar places the
foundation of Cyrene among other constituent myths of the Carneia and, in so
doing, suggests that they all share some ideological ground.
The festival of Carneian Apollo is the biggest and most important of all annual
Dorian festivals; it gives its name to a late summer month during which war could
not be waged.27 Pausanias provides us with several charter myths for the festival,
one of which explains the connection between the cult of Apollo Carneius and the
Dorian invasion: Carnus, an Acarnian by birth and a seer of Apollo, was killed by
Hippotes, and as a result, the wrath of Apollo fell upon the Dorian camp, forcing
Hippotes into exile in atonement for the bloodguilt. From this time on, the custom
of propitiating the Acarnian seer was established among the Dorians at the Carneia.
Pausanias then gives an alternative aetiology that derives the cult title of Carneius
from the name of the cornel trees in the grove of Apollo in Trojan Ida. According
to legend, the Greeks cut down these trees to build the infamous Trojan horse.
Upon learning that Apollo was angry with them for this, they propitiated him with
sacrifices and called him Apollo Carneius from the name for the cornel tree
(Kpoivefac;). 28
The cult of Apollo Carneius is clearly an important cult and one with a very
complicated history and significance for the Dorian peoples. We find resonances of
Apollo Carneius as a god of pastoral and nomadic concerns; in addition, the cult has
a strong martial component. But, more relevant to our discussion of the connec-
tions between the Carnian festival and the foundation of Cyrene, it becomes clear
that the idea of a conquering expedition is common to both the "Carnus" and the
"cornel" aetiologies for the Carneian festival. As Walter Burkert has pointed out,
both myths include a reference to guilt or atonement for guilt associated with the
violent appropriation of territory.29 In one account, the Dorians appease Apollo for
killing Carnus; the other story explains that the Greeks propitiate the god for cutting
down his trees in order to sack Troy. Violence and atonement belong to the colo-
nial tale as well. The act of founding a colony entails, after all, the appropriation of
foreign territory; it has much in common with a military venture. In fact, the three-
step plot of the Carnus myth—(1) murder, (2) pollution, (3) purification—appears,
as we have seen in Chapter 2, in many colonial tales. The concerns of colonization,
then, are the very ones that are also addressed within the celebration of Apollo
Carneius.30 As in the case of the Dorian invasion or the Trojan War, the violence of
territorial conquest is transferred from the act of colonization itself onto the myths
that represent that act and through which the violence can be safely addressed and
expiated.
Pindar begins the Carneian section of Pythian 5 with a list of Apollo's important
gifts to mankind, emphasizing his role in the Dorian settlements of Pylos, Sparta,
and Argos, often characterized in myth and literature as the Dorian invasion:
And he [Apollo] provides cures for heavy sicknesses for men and
women, he gave them the lyre, and he gives the Muse to whomever he
Pythian 5 115
wants, leading good government without war into their breasts, and he
manages a prophetic oracle. At this oracle, he settled the strong off-
spring of Heracles and Aegimius at Sparta, Argos, and divine Pylos.
(63-72)
This passage is followed by an apostrophe to Apollo Carneius himself at whose
feast the foundation of Cyrene is celebrated. Pindar then alludes obliquely to the
sons of Antenor, Trojans who were said to have occupied Cyrene after fleeing their
burning homeland:
Which [Cyrene] the strangers who delight in bronze, the Trojan sons of
Antenor, occupy; for they came with Helen when they saw their home-
land burning up in smoke in war. And the horse-driving race receives
them kindly, men approaching them with sacrifices and bearing gifts,
those men whom Aristoteles brought in swift ships when he opened up
a deep path across the sea. (82-88)
Pindar here describes a ritual occasion in which the horse-driving race of Cyre-
neans—the men Aristoteles (Battus) brought to Libya—welcome the Trojans in an
annual celebration of their powerful role as local heroes.31 As part of the Carneia,
the settlers of Cyrene take part in a ritual ceremony that acknowledges their appro-
priation of a preexisting local cult, that of the Antenorids, within their own colonial
history.32 Pindar describes the religious ritual of bearing sacrifices to a cult of the
dead in terms of welcoming guests to a feast; he represents cultural appropriation as
an annual dinner invitation.
It is clear that in Pythian 5 Pindar wants to connect the important Dorian festival
of the Carneia to the foundation of Cyrene; he says explicitly that at the Carneia,
they celebrate the gloriously founded city (ev Sam o£(3i£o|j£v Kupdvac; aya<-
Tipevav noAiv, 80-81). Through the Carneian connection, Pindar represents the
founding of Cyrene as a continuation of the great Dorian settlements of old; he
reminds us that Apollo and the Delphic oracle also sponsored the settlements of
Sparta, Pylos, and Argos. With the mention of the Antenorids, he also includes a
reference to the Greek conquest of Troy within his description of the Carneia and
Gyrene's foundation. Pindar thus includes within Pythian 5 both aetiologies for the
Carneia mentioned by Pausanias, and the very structure of the Carneian section of
the poem reinforces the deliberate placement of the foundation of Cyrene within the
wider context of the Carneian festival.33 Mention of the festival itself is ringed by
Pindar's account of Battus as Gyrene's founder. Battus scares the lions in lines
57-62; Pindar describes the honors that Battus enjoys as founder in lines 89-95.
Precisely between these two passages, Pindar alludes to three events associated with
the festival of Apollo Carneius: the Dorian invasion, the foundation of Cyrene, and
the Trojan War. Of the three aetiologies, the foundation of Cyrene occupies the
central spot. In recognizing the Dorian invasion, the foundation of Cyrene, and the
capture of Troy as three legends associated with the cult of Apollo Carneius, and in
appreciating the ideological agenda shared by all three legends, we get a clearer pic-
ture of how the Greeks characterized the act of colonization itself. Colonization is a
violent act of aggression, an appropriation of foreign territory, which demands
atonement. In addition, we now see that the Carneian section is not a mysterious
digression within Pythian 5, but is in fact a critical, well-integrated component of
Pindar's ode to Arcesilaus.
To return to Pythian 5, the ode concludes with general praise of the victor and a
traditional closing wish for continued success in the future:
You have dared [to make] as many approaches to native excellence as

there are; the benevolent god grants power to him now, and may you,
blessed sons of Cronus, grant that he has the same in the future both in
deeds and in plans—may no crop-withering wintry wind destroy his
time. The great mind of Zeus governs the prosperity of dear men. I
pray that he grant this honor at Olympia to the race of Battus. (116-24)
Through the image of the damaging, wintry wind, we come full circle from the
mention of rainstorms at the beginning of the ode. Pindar begs the gods, Zeus in
particular, not to dampen Arcesilaus' success and asks for an Olympian victory
next. Even in this final poetic request, Pindar emphasizes the connection between
Arcesilaus and Battus: the honor should go to the race of Battus.
This close reading of Pythian 5 uncovers several ways in which the themes of
colonial discourse interact with the conventions of Pindar's epinician program. The
cult of the founder, in addition to being the first independent cult in the history of a
new Greek city, is valuable to poet and victor in another respect as well. As Hieron
of Aetna knows full well, becoming the founder of a Greek city is one of the few
ways for a mere mortal of the "here-and-now" to achieve the immortal status of a
hero and to attain some of the fame accorded to the legendary mythological heroes
of a city like Thebes or Aegina. Founding heroes of the archaic period, such as Bat-
tus of Cyrene or Tlepolemus of Rhodes, occupy a tantalizing middle ground
between the mythological heroes of the epic cycle and recent historical figures.
Pindar, through the immortal power of his song, and sometimes with specific refer-
ence to the unique situation of a city founder, makes it possible for athletes who
Pythian 5 117
have been victorious in the Panhellenic games also to find their way somewhere
between the historical present and the legendary past.
Notes
1. The complete text of the poem and a translation can be found in the Appendix. A
detailed account of the founding of Cyrene by Battus is also told by Herodotus (4.150-58).
2. Hdt. 4.155.
3. Paus. 10.15.7.
4. The scholia say that the "voice from across the sea" is either the oracle of Apollo or
that it refers to the loudness of Battus' voice as he yelled at the lions from his ship before
landing. See Drachmann 1964 vol. 2 pp. 181-82. Farnell 1930 pp. 176-77 disagrees with
the scholiasts' interpretation and argues that the passage implies that Battus was in real dan-
ger and so must have been on land when he met the lion, not calling across the sea from his
boat. "The sentence is a strained way of saying that Battos, having come across the sea and
landed, brought his voice to bear on the lions. On the surface the phrase ought to mean that
the Libyan lions were scared by the outlandish sound of his Greek tongue; but one cannot
suppose that Pindar was trying to be humorous here." Lefkowitz 1985 p. 43 argues for a ref-
erence to the Delphic oracle because of the accompanying verb otTuveiKev, which is regularly
used in the context of delivering oracles. I would like to suggest that, in addition to the orac-
ular reference, there is also a nod to the tradition which Pindar uses in Pyth. 4.59-63 that Bat-
tus stuttered. I will discuss this further in the final chapter in conjunction with the nymph
Cyrene and her similar encounter with a lion.
5. Archegetes is Apollo's title as colonizing deity, and Pindar's use of the appellation
here is the first in extant Greek literature. Cf. Farnell 1907 vol. 4 pp. 374—75. See also the
inscription which contains the foundation decree of Cyrene, it refers both to Battus and to
Apollo as archegetai: Meiggs and Lewis 1969 #5; Apollo, lines 10-11; Battus, line 26.
6. Cf. Arist. Poet. 1457 b for his use of y XOOTTO to refer to foreign or rare words.
7. Cf. Cosi 1987 p. 131 : "In ancient, just as in modern colonisation, the loud and rhetor-
ical voice of Europe always triumphs over the lions of Africa."
8. Masson 1976 persuasively argues that the name BOTTCK; is Greek, derived from an
adjective *POTTO<;, stuttering. The word occurs in a widespread Greek context, and there is
no evidence for any Libyan word that would be transcribed into Greek as POTTO*; signifying
"king." Linguistic reality, however, did not stop the popular etymology of "king." Cf. scho-
lia to Pyth. 4 (Drachmann 1964 vol. 2 p. 93): Ai3u£<; yap BOTTOUI; TOUC; BaaiAeTc;
Aeyouaiv; and Hesychius' gloss: BOTTOC;- BaoiAeuc;, rupavvoc;. Aipuec;: TpauAocpoovoc;,
9. See Nagy 1986 pp. 92-94, "In the inherited diction of praise poetry, what an athlete
undergoes in his pursuit of victory is a ponos (ordeal), also called a kamatos, and these same
words apply also to the life-and-death struggles of heroes with their enemies, man and beast
alike." Nagy also explains the chain of compensation that links the hero whose death the
games celebrate to the athlete and the poet: "each ordeal of each victorious athlete, compen-
sating for the proto-ordeal of the hero who struggled and died, demands compensation of its
own in the form of song offered as praise for the athlete. And the song in turn demands com-
pensation from the victorious athlete and his family, to be offered to the composer of the
song." See also Nagy 1990a pp. 136-45.
10. Cf. Pind. Ol. 7.16; Pyth. 2.14; Isthm. 3.7; Isthm. 8.4 for other examples of this motif.
See Kurke 1991 pp. 108-16 for the social "community-building" function of arroiva as a
type of epinician gift exchange.
11. It seems that prominent political figures such as Arcesilaus did not always drive their
own chariots; this may have been due to tense political situations at home that made it unsafe
for the kings to be away for long periods of time. Hieron, whose chariot victory is praised in
Pythian 1, also commissioned another to drive his chariot. Thrasyboulus seems to have
driven the chariot for his father, Xenocrates, in Pyth. 6. See Lefkowitz 1985 pp. 39-42 for
further examples and for a sensible corrective to the overhistoricizing comments of Didymus
about the praise of Carrhotus in this poem.
12. Pindar carefully pairs the victor and the charioteer by describing each conspicuously
as blessed: |ja<ap, 20 (Arcesilaus); iJOKOpioc;, 46 (Carrhotus).
13. See Kurke 1991 pp. 110-11 for a discussion of how the nature of different events
demands compensation for different types of effort.
14. Cf. Find. Ol. 7.16 for a similar formulation: Tlepolemus receives the colony of
Rhodes as recompense for his own personal trauma. I will return to this passage in the dis-
cussion of Ol. 1 in Chapter 7.
15. We have already considered this passage in Chapter 1 as part of our discussion of the
cult of the founder. Keeping this important cult practice in mind, we can better appreciate
how Pindar alludes to it as a way to praise Arcesilaus. Pelliccia 1989 pp. 91-92 discusses
this passage in the context of aetiological syntax, which he defines (pp. 74-75) as "the juxta-
position, either through parataxis or hypotaxis, of the statement of an event in the past and
the statement in the present tense of equivalent, of a perpetually true condition vel sim. fol-
lowing from it." The historical event is given in the main clause (aorist or imperfect); here
Pindar lists two: Battus founded (KT!OEV) altars and built (tcaT£'9r|K£v) roads. The perpetual
state following from the event is expressed in a subordinate clause in the present tense. Bat-
tus lies buried (KCITOU Gavoov) in the marketplace—a physical sign of his heroization—as a
result of the founding activities that Pindar lists.
16. Malkinl987a pp. 200-203.
17. Find. Ol. 1.90-93; cf. Ol. 10.24. Gerber 1982 pp. 143-45. See Nagy 1990a pp.
116-35 for Pelops' connection to the aetiology of the Olympian games.
18. Find. Pyth. 9.79-83; cf. Ol. 9.98-99.
19. Find. Ol. 7.77. Other examples of hero cults in Pindar's odes include Alcmaeon in
Pyth. 8 (see Lefkowitz 1977) and the "yErrwv rjpcoc;" m Nent. 7 (see Rusten 1983).
20. Cf. Segal 1985 pp. 202-3 for the association of figurative libations of song with the
cult practice of pouring libations on the graves of heroes. In both cases, the poet functions as
"messenger" between the upper world and Hades.
21. Cf. Boedeker 1984 pp. 90-92 where she argues that milk and honey are common to
rituals for the dead; dew (eepoa) reflects the purity of the drink. "Pindar's drink is a bever-
age well calculated to satisfy the athlete's thirst for song by connecting him to the life of the
gods."
22. Cf. Find. Isthm. 6.74; Nem. 5.53; Pyth. 8.56. See Kurke 1991 pp. 62-70 for a more
detailed discussion of the imagery of victory songs and ritual offerings to the dead.
23. Mezger 1880 p. 232; Lefkowitz 1985 pp. 52-53, 57; Segal 1985 pp. 205-8.
24. Boedeker 1984 pp. 96-97. For a discussion of the similarities between Pindar's
poetry and funerary symbolism, see Duchemin 1955 pp. 269-96. For the metaphorical con-
nections between images of water, liquid, and especially dew, and poetry, see Boedeker 1984
pp. 80-99.
25. Pindar speaks here in the first person as poet; any personal details that he includes in
the praise of Arcesilaus should only be considered as part of his poetic persona. See Kirk-
wood 1981; Lefkowitz 1985 pp. 45-49.
26. Callimachus also includes the foundation of Cyrene as part of the celebration of the
Carneian festival.
Pythian 5 119
27. For the Carneian festival and Apollo Carneius, see Paus. 3.13.3-5 and Frazer ad
loc.; Wide 1973 pp. 73-87; RE s.v. Karneia cols. 1986-88; s.v. Karneios cols. 1989-93; Far-
nell 1907 vol. 4 pp. 131-35; Anastase 1975 pp. 198-202; Burkert 1985 pp. 234-36. Farnell
1932 vol. 2 p. 168 assumes that Pythian 5 was composed and performed for the Carneian fes-
tival in the year following the victory. For a discussion ofPyth. 5 and Apollo Carneius in the
context of connections between Sparta and Cyrene, see Nafissi 1985. For a more general dis-
cussion of Apollo Carneius and Pyth. 5, see Krummen 1990 pp. 108-16.
28. Paus. 3.13.4—5. Pausanias goes on to explain that the Greeks derived Kapveioc; from
Kpavdac; by transposing the rho.
29. Burkert 1985 pp. 234-36.
30. I want to thank I. Malkin for letting me see part of his work in progress on Spartan
colonial mythology in which he suggests that Apollo's role as Archegetes may be closely
linked to the cult of Apollo Carneius.
31. I read "the horsedriving race" (TO 5' cXAoinnov sGvoc;) as a reference to the Cyre-
neans, not the Trojans, and take it as the subject of the sentence. This same subject is then
taken up as av8p£c; in the next line, the men who were brought to Cyrene by Aristoteles,
another name for Battus. This interpretation involves no textual emendations and takes the
passage as a reference not to an historical occasion but rather to a ritual celebration of local
heroes. Cf. Gerber 1982 pp. 141^12; Lefkowitz 1985 pp. 50-51 and n. 52. Brunei 1964 pp.
5-21 provides the most comprehensive survey of the textual and interpretive problems with
this passage and concludes that the horsedrivers are the Cyreneans who receive the Trojans
as heroes in a cult ceremony. Chamoux 1949 and 1953 pp. 71-72, 186 also argues against
the existence of an earlier historical foundation of Cyrene by the Trojans. Farnell 1930 pp.
179-80 and Vian 1955 pp. 307-11 come to the same basic conclusion but by reading the Tro-
jans as the horsedriving race and as the object of SEKOVTOU. Ferret 1942 pp. 187-89 reads the
Trojans as the horsedriving race and as the subject of SEKOVTOI. Brillante 1989 discusses the
cult of the Antenorids and the relations between the Greeks and the indigenous populations.
32. Wilamowitz 1922 p. 380 n. 1 refers to similar stories of early settlements in Mediter-
ranean lands of wandering Trojans in places afterwards colonized by Greeks. Farnell 1930 p.
180 speculates that if Greek colonists on their arrival found any such Trojan legends con-
nected with some ancient graves, they would be likely to associate them with the name of the
Phil-Hellene, Antenor, so as to ingratiate themselves with the local spirits.
33. Calame 1990 pp. 312-13 and n. 96 also mentions the double aition for the Carneia in
Pythian 5.
7
Olympian 7 and Bacchylides Ode 11 .-
Murder, Victory, and Colonization
Here, the sweet recompense for bitter sorrow was established for Tlepolemus of
Tiryns, the founder, just as if for a god,. . . (Find. Ol. 7.77-79)
In Pythian 5, Pindar adapts Gyrene's colonial tradition to fit the conventions of

epinician poetry; in drawing close parallels between the civic roles of founder and
victor, he suggests that each brings significant power and fame to his city. In
Olympian 1 as well, Pindar paints an elaborate triptych of colonial tales in praise of
Diagoras of Rhodes' victory in the boxing competition at Olympia in 464 B.C.E. We
have already examined one panel of this aetiological tableau—the marriage of
Helius and Rhodes—within the larger context of marriage and rape imagery in city
foundation legends. Now in this chapter, I will focus on another chapter in Rhodes'
early history—its colonization by Tlepolemus of Argos. Pindar uses the colonial
tradition of Rhodes to celebrate his client's athletic success both in terms that will
be familiar to us from our discussion of Pythian 5 and in new ways as well. In addi-
tion to praising the victor in light of the city founder, Pindar exploits the murderer-
founder analogy that we discussed in Chapter 2 (for Tlepolemus, the founding hero
of Rhodes, is also a murderer) and extends it to include athletic victory as well.
Bacchylides, too, describes Panhellenic competition and city foundations as parallel
acts of purification, and for this reason, a reading of Bacchylides Ode 11 in conjunc-
tion with a discussion of Olympian 1 will explore how the purification-colonization
metaphor operates within the context of epinician poetry.
Let us begin with Olympian 1 and a brief overview of the structure of the ode as
a whole.1 The poem opens with a complicated simile taken from the betrothal cere-
mony celebrating the union of two households through marriage: Pindar compares
his gift of song (liquid nectar) to the victor with the bride's father's gift of wine,
handed in a golden cup, or phiale, to his future son-in-law (1-10).2 The image of
gold is prominent throughout the ode, and in the scholia we read that Olympian 1
was dedicated in gold letters at the temple of Athena in the Rhodian city of Lin-
120
Olympian 7 and Bacchylides Ode 11 121
dus—it was literally "worth its weight in gold."3 After the opening simile, Pindar
announces that he will praise Diagoras for his boxing victory by singing of Rhodes,
the daughter of Aphrodite and bride of Helius; he adds that he wishes to honor
Diagoras' father and the other inhabitants of Rhodes as well (13-19). Pindar then
sets about praising both victor and city by beginning the three-part narrative section
of the ode with an account of Tlepolemus and the colonization of Rhodes (20-33).
Tlepolemus, son of Heracles, killed Licymnius, his mother's bastard brother, in
a fit of anger by hitting him with a gnarled olive club. He then goes to consult the
god, and Apollo tells Tlepolemus to sail from the coast of Lernaea straight to a land
surrounded by sea. At this point, Apollo's prophetic instructions blend impercepti-
bly into the next phase of the poem, the account of Athena's altar. The island that
Apollo told Tlepolemus to settle is the same one that Zeus showered with gold at
the time when Athena was born from his head. Helius advised his dear sons to
become the first to worship this goddess, and they set up a holy altar in her honor.
An unpredicted cloud of forgetfulness, however, caused them to omit fire and to
offer Hameless sacrifices to her. Nevertheless, Zeus showered the island with more
gold, and Athena gave them artistic gifts (34—51).
Pindar then remarks that men know many ancient stories and begins to tell a
third tale from Rhodes' early history, this one about the birth of the island itself
(54-76). When the gods were dividing up the world, Helius, the sun god, was
absent and was left out of the allotment. Zeus was ready to make a new division
when Helius asked instead if he might have the island that only he could see was
just now emerging from the sea. Zeus and the fates agreed, and once the new island
of Rhodes burst forth from the sea, Helius lay with her and sired seven children, one
of whom bore the three eponymous founders of the Rhodian cities of Camirus, laly-
sus, and Lindus.
In naming these Rhodian cities, Pindar finds his way back to the beginning of
his myth, back to Tlepolemus. Because he was a founder, or archegetes, sacrifices
and athletic contests were established in his honor, and at these games, Diagoras
was crowned with victory twice (77-81). Mention of the Tlepolemeia, or games in
honor of Tlepolemus, begins a detailed victory catalogue, listing the numerous vic-
tories of Diagoras in all four Panhellenic competitions and in local contests all over
the world (81-87). Pindar then concludes the ode with a prayer to Zeus to honor
this Olympian victory. Diagoras has kept the wisdom of his ancestors in mind and
continued the family tradition of athletic excellence. Even the city joins in the vic-
tory celebrations of the Eratidae, and the changeable winds blow different ways at
different times.
After the opening simile, Pindar begins the first epode with the announcement
that he intends to praise Diagoras for his victory in the boxing competition:
And now, with the accompaniment of both [lyre and pipes], I have
entered with Diagoras, hymning the girl of the ocean, the daughter of
Aphrodite and wife of Helius, Rhodes, in order that I may praise that
straight-fighting hulk of a man who was crowned beside the Alpheus in
compensation for boxing, and beside the Castalian springs and [so that
I may praise] his father, Damegetus, who pleases Dike, dwelling by the
Argive spear upon the three-citied island near the headland of wide-
plained Asia. (13-19)
There are several interesting details here. First, notice how Pindar states his poetic
intentions: he hymns Rhodes in order to praise (UJJVECOV . . . ocppa . . . aivs'oco)
Diagoras. In other words, the victor and his native city are inextricably linked from
an epinician point of view; praise for one naturally includes the other. The ode
becomes as much about the city as it is about the athlete, for as Pindar remarks at
the end, the city shares in the victory celebration of its citizens ('EpomSav TOI auv
XapiTEaaiv e'xsi/QaAiac; Kai rroAic;, 93-94). For this reason—in order to celebrate
the city of Rhodes together with its victor—Pindar chooses to sing of the city's ori-
gins.
Second, we recognize the ambiguous manner with which Pindar introduces
Rhodes. First she is just "the ocean-y feminine one" (rav novriav), and the adjec-
tive suggests an impersonal object associated with the sea, such as an island. But
the following two appositional phrases describe a divine personage—the daughter
of Aphrodite (naTS' 'AcppoSiTac;) and bride of Helius ('AEAioio TE vujjcpav).
Finally, Pindar reveals the noun in question, Rhodes, and as the myth will make
clear, she is both island and bride.4 This conflation of eponymous nymph and city,
personified as a mythological figure, helps Pindar include praise of the city within
his ode for the victor. Furthermore, the mention of Aphrodite and brides links this
passage with the marriage simile of the proem; even more important, it foreshadows
the marriage of Helius and Rhodes to follow (61-71).5
The three triads that tell Rhodes' history are organized by ring composition,
beginning and ending with Tlepolemus' settlement of the island after being exiled
for murder from Argos, and a close reading of this section of the ode will explore
once again how Pindar embeds colonial ideology in an epinician context. In order
to praise Diagoras the victorious boxer, Pindar has already revealed his strategy of
hymning Rhodes (both nymph and island), and he will indeed sing of the founding
marriage of the nymph later in the ode. But now, he explains, he must begin at the
beginning, with the colonial founder, Tlepolemus:
I wish, announcing from the beginning, from Tlepolemus, to straighten

out the common account for the wide-strengthed race of Heracles. For
they boast to descend on their father's side from Zeus, and on their
mother's side, to be the sons of Amyntor through Astydameia. (20-24)
First of all, Pindar establishes Tlepolemus' family connections, and they are indeed
relevant to the occasion at hand. Tlepolemus is the son of Heracles, the founder of
the Olympian games, and thus descended from Zeus, their patron deity. Second, in
addition to his heroic lineage, Tlepolemus first appears as a colonial founder in the
Iliad, in the "Catalogue of Ships," leading the Rhodian contingent to Troy, and it
may be this Iliadic passage (or one like it) that Pindar has in mind when he
announces that he wishes to correct the common account (£uvov ayye'XXoov
SiopOwoai Xoyov). 6 In order to appreciate the nature of the correction it will be
helpful to take a look at the two versions side by side. In the "Catalogue of Ships,"
as part of the list of Rhodian troops, Homer includes a brief synopsis of the colo-
nization of Rhodes:
Now when Tlepolemus was grown in the strong-built mansion, at once

he struck to death his own father's beloved uncle, Licymnius, scion of
Ares, a man already aging. At once he put ships together and assem-
bled a host of people and fled across the sea, since the others threat-
ened, the rest of the sons and the grandsons of the strength of Heracles.
And he came to Rhodes a wanderer, having suffered troubles, and they
settled there in triple divisions by tribes, beloved of Zeus,...
(2.661-69)
In Olympian 1, Pindar presents the following "corrected" version:
For he killed Licymnius, the bastard brother of Alcmene, striking him

with a scepter of hard olive wood at Tiryns, as he [Licymnius] was
leaving the rooms of Midea, he, the founder of this land here—having
been driven to anger. Disturbances of the mind cause even a wise man
to wander astray. He went to consult the god. And the golden-haired
one told him from his well-scented inner chamber to sail from the
Lernean cape straight to a land surrounded by sea . . . (27-33)7
The two accounts of the settlement of Rhodes obviously have much in common. In
each, Tlepolemus, a son of Heracles, kills Licymnius, his uncle. As a result, he
immediately flees home and settles Rhodes. There are, however, some important
discrepancies as well. Most relevant to our current discussion, Pindar inserts Del-
phic Apollo into the colonization account.8 In the Homeric poems, we understand
that it was fear of retribution from relatives which drove murderers, even in cases of
justifiable killings, into exile.9 Accordingly, in the Iliad, Tlepolemus rounds up his
companions and sails immediately to Rhodes without any divine consultation at all.
Once Apollo and the Delphic oracle become the accepted authorities in cases of the
pollution resulting from murder, it is more often the case that the oracle itself
directs the exile, and unlike the Homeric version, in Olympian 1, Tlepolemus does
consult Delphic Apollo after killing his uncle.
Furthermore, Pindar intensifies the importance of Delphi within his narrative by
reminding his audience that Tlepolemus' role as founder of Rhodes is a direct con-
sequence of his act of homicide. The word order makes it clear: Tlepolemus killed
Licymnius, he, the founder of this land, having been made angry (Tao5£ TTOTE
XGovoc; okioTqp yok(j&f.\c,, 30). Immediately following this mention of the
angered oikist, Pindar interrupts his narrative with a gnomic passage: "disturbances
of the mind knock astray even the wise man" (ai BE 9p£vwv Tapaxai napsnAay-
£av Koi oocpov, 30-31). The gnome seems designed to explain the force of
XoAwedc;, anger, and it is tempting to follow J. Defradas, who pursues the motif
here as another Delphically influenced Pindaric correction. He suggests that by
characterizing Tlepolemus' act as involuntary manslaughter, an act of passion
rather than premeditated murder, Pindar specifically refers to the prominent role
that Delphic Apollo and his oracle play in adjudicating such cases of murder.10
Whether or not the motif is specifically Delphic, Pindar certainly does establish
Delphi as the turning point in Olympian 7, the transition between the murderer's
exile and the colonist's expedition. The absence of premeditation, as we noted ear-
lier, reinforces the colonists' reluctant attitude toward overseas settlement.
More important, we recognize the narrative pattern. A murderer consults the
Delphic oracle to be purified and is told by Apollo to lead a colonial expedition.
Like Archias, the founder of Syracuse, and Alcmaeon, who settles Acarnania, Tle-
polemus' colonial expedition represents the purification necessary to expiate an act
of homicide. We have seen that within the larger system of colonial representation,
city founders are often memorialized as murderers, but in an epinician context, this
observation about how colonial discourse works leads us to pose yet another ques-
tion—why is a murderous founder an appropriate model for celebrating an athletic
victor's accomplishment? Indeed, Pindar's "corrected" version of the colonization
of Rhodes led by a murderer-in-exile has seemed to some to be an unlikely source
of praise for an Olympic victor, and scholars have tried to account for this apparent
anomaly by saying that Pindar highlights the good that can come after a mistake is
made.11 While this interpretation is superficially accurate, it misses the deeper reso-
nances of colonial representational strategies. As we have seen, the tendency to
conflate a murderer-in-exile with a colonial founder reflects the Greek perception of
important ideological similarities between purification through exile and coloniza-
tion. Once purified, the murderer-turned-founder confers powerful advantage upon
the city he founds. Keeping this rhetorical strategy in mind, we gain new insight,
first of all, into Pindar's incorporation of Apollo and the Delphic oracle into his ver-
sion of the colonization of Rhodes. But more important, we better understand how
the poem works; we can appreciate Pindar's epinician strategy in choosing to com-
pare Diagoras, a victor in the Olympian boxing competition, with Tlepolemus, a
murderous founder.
After describing Tlepolemus' Delphic consultation and his mission to colonize
Rhodes, Pindar quickly shifts his narrative focus and sings of the founding of
Athena's altar on Rhodes and of the birth of the island itself. At the end of the
three-part mythological section, however, Pindar uses a locative adverb (joGi) to
return once again to Tlepolemus and the colonial plot. The transition hinges upon
celebrations of the founder's cult, Tlepolemus' compensation for the efforts of lead-
ing a colony:
Here, sweet recompense for bitter sorrow was established for Tlepole-
mus of Tiryns, the founder, just as if for a god—a procession filled with
the smoke of sacrificed sheep and athletic contests. (77-80)
As the founder of the Argive colony on Rhodes, Tlepolemus, like Battus in Pythian
5, receives heroic honors after death, and Pindar describes the civic celebrations
that include annual sacrifices and athletic games. But because this particular colo-
nial founder is also a murderer, Pindar in this poem presents Tlepolemus' posthu-
mous transformation from colonial founder to civic hero as a kind of purification.
The particular language used—"sweet recompense for bitter sorrow" (AuTpov ou(j-
cpopac; oiKTpac; yAuKu)—evokes Apollo's colonial role as purifier, and through
chiastic word order Pindar suggests that the act of sweet purification (Aurpov . . .
y A u K u ) embraces and expiates the original crime of murder (oup9Opac; oiKTpac;).
By commemorating a murderer as a founding hero, the new city thereby appropri-
ates to itself the sacred power associated with the purification that murder demands.
Pindar realizes this, and he specifically introduces Apollo's role as purifier into his
account of Tlepolemus and the founding of Rhodes. After killing Licymnius, Tle-
polemus consults Apollo's oracle at Delphi and then is purified by setting out to
found a colony. The emphasis is not on Tlepolemus as a polluted or defiled mur-
derer, but on his positive and sacred value as a founder of a new city. By compar-
ing Diagoras with Tlepolemus, Pindar suggests that a victorious athlete has similar
powers to confer upon his city, and he thus deserves the reward of fame in return for
the toils of victory in the boxing competition.
We have already seen in our discussion of Pythian 5 that Pindar often draws
parallels between the deeds of athlete and hero by describing each as toils or efforts.
The resulting honors or celebrations received are correspondingly represented as
compensation or rewards. Indeed, at the very beginning of Olympian 1, Pindar
refers to the song he sings in honor of Diagoras' Olympian victory as a reward for
boxing (nuyijac; arroiva), and at the end of the mythological section, he similarly
describes Tlepolemus' founder's cult as purifying compensation (Aurpov oup-
cpopae; oiKTpac; yAuKu). 1 2 Pindar uses this same convention of compensation as
purification (Aujpov) to describe the celebratory song and dance that accompany
victory at the beginning of Isthmian 8 as well, and in this poem, he combines both
of the terms that he uses separately in Olympian 1 to praise Diagoras in comparison
with Tlepolemus:
Let someone, O young men, go to the glorious porch of his father Tele-
sarchus and raise up the celebration for Cleander, in his youth, a glori-
ous recompense for his efforts, the reward for an Isthmian victory,.. .
(1-4)
As compensation for the risks and dangers of competition, compensation character-

ized in purificatory terms, Pindar offers the komos, a victory song and celebration,
to the young athlete.
To return to Olympian 7, the career of the oikist is a potent source of praise for
the athletic victor. Furthermore, Tlepolemus' "shady" background as a murderer-
turned-founder proves not to be a liability but is, in fact, particularly relevant to
Diagoras' role as victor. Both founder and victor gain fame for their efforts; the
accomplishment of each involves risk and violence. Tlepolemus kills his uncle,
founds a colony, and is celebrated as a founding hero. Diagoras overcomes his
opponent in a boxing match and achieves a similar kind of civic stature of his own.
In this sense, Pindar characterizes Tlepolemus' actions as a mythic exaggeration of
the violent sport of boxing and creates a framework in which to perceive the athlete
as heroic. As Gregory Nagy has shown, "the ordeals of heroes, as myths, are analo-
gous to the ordeals of athletes, as rituals, in that the themes of living and dying in the
myth are analogous to the themes of winning and losing in the ritual of athletics."13
We know that the Greeks celebrated successful athletes with great honors.
Athenian Olympic victors, for example, were awarded cash prizes paid by the
Athenian treasury.14 In addition, an inscription promises a lifetime of free meals at
the prytaneum to all victors in athletic or equestrian events at the four major Panhel-
lenic games.15 Xenophanes complained that in addition to a lump sum, victorious
athletes got free board at public expense and seats of honor at public festivals.16
Rewards to athletes, however, were not restricted to material goods. A victor at the
Olympian games could also commission a statue of himself that would stand at
Olympia, forever commemorating his achievement. In Book Six of his travels, Pau-
sanias recounts many examples of such statues of Olympic victors including those
of Diagoras and his family.17 He also mentions that occasionally these athletes
were honored as heroes.
Not all athletes, however, achieved the status of a hero in their native cities, and
the circumstances that prompted such a transformation are significant in light of our
discussion of the murderous founder as heroic model for an athletic victor. Before
we consider the nature of these circumstances, let us look at one of the hero-athletes
from Pausanias' list. Cleomedes of Astypalaea accidentally killed his opponent,
Iccus of Epidaurus, in the boxing event at the Olympian games in 492 B.C.E., and as
a result, the judges denied him the victory. Cleomedes was wild with anger and
attacked a schoolhouse. He pulled down a pillar supporting the roof, which col-
lapsed and killed sixty children. The horrified citizens pelted Cleomedes with
stones, and he fled to the temple of Athena for sanctuary where he crawled into a
box to hide. When the mob arrived and opened the chest, there was no sign of the
boxer, dead or alive. The Astypalaeans then consulted the Delphic Oracle about the
mystery and received orders to honor Cleomedes as a hero:
Last of heroes is Cleomedes of Astypalaea. Honor him with sacrifices

as being no longer mortal. (6.9.8)
Pausanias' story reflects a way of thinking that associates athletic excellence with
heroic behavior. Joseph Fontenrose wants to see in Pausanias' list of heroized ath-
letes an original archetype of athlete-hero modelled perhaps on Heracles, the Greek
hero who performs labors which are called athla and which often resemble athletic
events.18 This explanation, however, fails to explain why only certain athletes
become heroes. Fran§ois Bohringer presents another approach that links the hero-
ization of athletes with cities in a state of internal or external crisis. For example,
he reads Cleomedes' transformation from athlete to hero within the larger context
of the general Persian threat to the islands at the beginning of the fifth century and
Herodotus' specific mention of the troubles that Chios suffered prior to the Persian
invasion.19 Astypalaea, like Chios, Bohringer suggests, threatened by the Persian
menace after the capture of Miletus in 494 B.C.E., looked to the external Olympic
success of an athlete to counteract the internal crisis of the city.20
Such a phenomenon, together with the language and imagery of both epinician
poetry and athletic inscriptions, suggests that the Greeks believed in a kind of talis-
manic power that the victorious athlete possesses and can transfer to the city in its
time of need.21 Bohringer's theory helps account for the selectivity with which only
some athletes are celebrated as heroes and is important for our discussion of
Olympian 1 with its analogy between murderous founder and victor. The talismanic
power of the victorious athlete is quite similar to the consecrating power associated
with a purified murderer, and we can begin to see how legends of murderous
founders operate in epinican contexts. Athletes receive heroic honors under specific
historical conditions such as an internal or external threat to civic stability, and the
crisis that prompts the heroization of an athlete (as well as the victory itself) repre-
sents a transgression of proper ritual norms. Colonies, too, are settled in response to
civic crisis, and colonial founders, especially those who are remembered as murder-
ers, trangress boundaries; as a result, they attain heroic status. Finally, we must
remember that athletes and city founders are among the few ordinary mortals who
can attain the status of hero in the historical Greek world. Common to both the ath-
lete (especially one competing in violent sports such as boxing) and the murderous
city founder is the extraordinary deed, the transgressive act. Within this transgres-
sion, however, lies the potential for significant power and heroic status. We have
seen that within the narrative structure of colonial tales, the act of murder acknowl-
edges the bloodshed inherent in establishing new cities in foreign territories. The
violence of athletic competition is part of this same system—a system which
accommodates the sacrifices and violence that are the price of civilization.
In Olympian 7, Pindar includes the myth of Tlepolemus' murder and subsequent
settlement of Rhodes as a model for the praise of Diagoras the Olympic boxing vic-
tor. The careers of both founder and boxer involve risk and violence; both combine
individual achievement with glory for their cities. The talismanic power, or kudos,
that the athlete confers upon his native city is reinforced in this poem through the
figure of Tlepolemus, a murderer transformed through purification into a city
founder. Appropriately enough, crowns, the physical manifestation of that power
which both athlete and founder bring to the city, also play a prominent role in
Olympian 7; they help establish the link between Diagoras and Tlepolemus.22 At
the beginning of the ode, Diagoras is crowned beside the Alpheus (oTEcpavcooa-
IJEVOV, 15); he is crowned again at the end, twice at the games of Tlepolemus
(EOTEcpav/woctTo Sic;, 81). This crowning imagery highlights the circular pattern of
the narrative, the ring composition of the Tlepolemus myth.
The account of an angry murderer turned colonial founder no longer appears to
be an unlikely source of praise for the very successful boxer Diagoras of Rhodes on
the occasion of his Olympic victory. Archaic colonial discourse reveals a strong
ideological link between purification and colonization, and we have seen that the
key to this analogy lies not in the murder itself but in the two-step process of mur-
der followed by purification. Pindar suggests that just as the murderer, once
purified, assumes a new constructive value as founder of the new city, the athlete,
victorious in competition, plays an important civic role in conferring his talismanic
power upon his native city. In addition, accounts of purified murderers as colonial
founders address the issue of violence that is implicit in Panhellenic competition as
well.
In many ways, the structure and themes of Olympian 7, unique as they may
seem, are similar to an epinician poem by Bacchylides, Ode 11, also composed for a
victor from a colonial city, and a close look at this poem will supplement and rein-
force our reading of Olympian 7.23 Ode 11 honors Alexidamus of Metapontum,
victor in the boys' wrestling match at Delphi. The colony of Metapontum was set-
tled by Achaeans from the Corinthian gulf at the end of the eighth or early seventh
century B.C.E., led by an oikist named Leucippus. But as is often the case, the
Metapontines recall another tradition as well which claims different colonial ori-
gins. Strabo tells us that they claimed that Metapontum was colonized by Achaeans
from Pylos led by Nestor as they returned home at the end of the Trojan War.24
Bacchylides alludes to this later tradition at the end of the ode when he mentions the
sack of Troy by the Achaeans.25
Like Olympian 7, the seemingly inappropriate myth of Bacchylides' Ode 11, the
tale of the maddened daughters of Proetus, has perplexed scholars; how could such
a story celebrate a young man's Pythian victory? Compounding this interpretive
problem is the complicated structure of the ode, and for this reason, it will be help-
ful to outline it briefly before we explore the nature of the myth and its use of colo-
nization imagery. The poem is carefully divided into three sections, each of which
is marked by ring composition.26 The first section, the proemium, contains an
appeal to Nike, goddess of victory—it is through her benevolence that Alexidamus
enjoys the celebration of his victory at the Pythian games. He would have won at
Olympia as well the year before if the judges had been fair, and so Artemis Hemera,
the Soother, has given him this victory (1-39).
The second section of the poem contains the myth, and this, too, is recounted in
ring composition; the account begins and ends with the construction of the altar to
Artemis, for, as Bacchylides continues, it was to this goddess that Proetus set up an
altar when Hera drove his daughters mad. They had boasted that their father was
more wealthy than the golden-haired consort of Zeus, and so she drove them from
Tiryns. Ten years earlier Proetus and his daughters had been forced to leave their
native city of Argos, for an unending quarrel erupted between Proetus and his
brother, Acrisius. To solve the quarrel the people asked that the brothers share the
land and that the younger make a new home in Tiryns. He did, and Zeus honored
the new site and had the mighty Cyclopes build its walls (40-81).
At this point in the poem, we start working our way back again through the
myth. Bacchylides has explained why the daughters of Proetus were driven from
Tiryns just as they were earlier expelled from Argos. They wandered for thirteen
months until their father came to the River Lousus in Arcadia. There Proetus
appealed to Artemis, who in turn persuaded Hera to release the daughters, and they
immediately built an altar to Artemis. Now, in the third and final section of the ode,
Bacchylides addresses the goddess in his own voice and remarks that she accompa-
nied the Achaean settlers from this spot in Arcadia to her new temple on the banks
of the Casas River in Metapontum (82-126).
Reference to the victory itself is limited to the opening section of the poem. The
goddess Artemis provides the connection between the victory and the myth. Once
Bacchylides mentions Artemis' role in Alexidamus' success—she has given him
victory at Delphi as a soothing salve for his previous Olympic defeat—the mytho-
logical material unfolds in a precise, circular fashion. In fact there are two separate
but connected rings, each of which culminates in a foundation. Parallel to the
account of the foundation of the altar to Artemis at Lousus is the story of the foun-
dation of the city of Tiryns. The stories are told in elaborate ring composition,
marked by exact verbal repetition. The following diagram makes the structure
clear:
Alexidamus would have also won at Olympia; Artemis Hemera gives this victory
as cure
to whom (TO) Proetus and daughters built altar OGOJJOV) 40-42
whom (TOC;) Hera drove mad; for they boasted about wealth
so they left (AirroGoai) Tiryns 43-58
having left (AITTOVTEC;) Argos ten years earlier,
they now dwell (valov) with king
a quarrel (vsTKOc;) occurred; younger brother founded Tiryns
where they live (vouov) having left (AITTOVTEC;) Argos 59-81
from there (Tiryns), they rushed off, wandered thirteen months
Proetus bathes at Lousus 82-109
builds an altar (Pcopov) to Artemis 110-12
It has been noted that Bacchylides' version of the myth of the daughters of Proe-
tus is not exactly consistent with earlier versions.27 The myth can be found as early
as Hesiod's Catalogue of Women, and various accounts give different reasons for
the daughters' mania—they offended either Hera or Dionysus—and their sickness
also takes different forms—baldness, leprosy, or Bacchic madness. The main focus
of the traditional version, however, is not the daughters but Proetus himself and his
dealings with the seer Melampus, who bargains with the king to cure his daughters
in return for a sizeable chunk of his kingdom.28 Bacchylides, however, tells a dif-
ferent version of the myth. He suppresses Melampus completely and has Artemis,
herself, cure the women directly. The emphasis, thus, is on Artemis and on the con-
struction of her temple at Lousus as a healing process. Furthermore, the temple is
connected with another constructive act—the foundation of a city.29
The central point of the mythological section, in fact of the poem itself, is the
account of the foundation of Tiryns:
For turbulent strife had arisen from harsh beginnings among the broth-
ers, Proetus and Acrisius, and they were destroying the people with
grievous and unmeasured fighting; they [the people] begged the sons of
Abas to draw lots for the land, rich in barley, and that the younger one
settle Tiryns before [Argos] fell into harsh necessity. (64—72)
Once again we recognize traditional colonization motifs within this story. An

implacable quarrel (VE!KOC; yap a|jai|jaKETov), which divides the population
(SixooTaoiaic;), provokes the settlement of Tiryns. As we have seen in the cases of
Cyrene or Elea, civil strife or factionalism is often presented as the motivating fac-
tor for colonial expeditions, and Bacchylides isolates this aspect of the colonization
of Tiryns.30 Earlier, we noted that Plato describes the expulsion of political undesir-
ables in the form of a colony as a way to purify the city of a bad element, and we
have also seen that political exile functions narratively as a multiform of exile for
murder, another kind of civic purification. In Ode 11, the people themselves recog-
nize the destructive potential of this quarrel between the two ruling brothers and ask
that the younger one leave to found a new city elsewhere.31 They beg him to found
a new city as a way to purge the existing one of certain disaster.
The account of Tiryns' foundation is marked very clearly by verbal repetition.
Bacchylides introduces the founding legend by mentioning that the heroes live in
Tiryns now, having left Argos behind (Ainovrsc; "Apyoc; / vaTov, 60-61). At the
end of the account, Bacchylides uses the same language again (vcuov . . . / "Apyoc;
qpcoec; nepKAciTo! AITTOVT[£C;, 80-81). Bacchylides'circular narrative thus embeds
the founding of Tiryns within the myth of the purification of the daughters of Proe-
tus, and as Anne Burnett has argued, the two accounts are not at all contradictory,
but rather two versions of the same tale:
Both stories begin with an unnatural crime, for the sisters quarreled with Hera in a
place where they did not belong, while the brothers quarreled with one another in
the family palace where no quarrels should occur. In both cases punishment came
in the form of further unnatural acts that were perverse and self-damaging (Bac-
chylides' word for this quality is palintropos, 54; contrary, turned back upon
itself): bestial unfeminine wanderings for the girls and wasteful unprincely
killings for the men. These punishments are in each story called "necessity"
(anangke, 46 and 72), and in each story a prayer is offered, in the masculine tale
by the people of Argos (69) and in the feminine one by the king, Proetus (99).
Then the "necessity" of grievous slaughter and the "necessity" of godless ravings
are alike simply "stopped" (ethelen ... pausai, 73-76; pausen, 108) by the two
gods. And finally both stories end with outward and visible signs of the gods'
interventions, the walls and the altar (teichos . .. kamon, 77; temenos bomon te
teuchon, HO).32
Such careful verbal parallelism conflates the two accounts; they become different
ways to tell the same story. The outer tale helps us to read the inner one; it
describes the founding of a city as a purificatory act.
Although Apollo himself is not mentioned in this colonial account, we recog-
nize the theme of colonial endeavor as a process of civic purification, and this
brings us back to our original question—what can these two myths of purification
and foundation have to do with a young boy's wrestling victory at the Pythian
games? We have seen in our discussions of Pythian 5 and Olympian 1 how the
career of a city founder serves in many ways as a poetic model for the praise of an
athletic victor. Both activities bring fame and renown to the city; they both require
toil and effort but bring rewards in return.33 Finally, both founder and victor are
honored as civic heroes. But equally important is the concept of purification
itself—it is a powerful and constructive force for the city.
Bacchylides tells us that Alexidamus received his Pythian victory from the
"soothing goddess" because he was denied a previous Olympian victory. Similarly,
in an attempt to free his daughters from their madness, Proetus builds a temple to
Artemis at the soothing springs of Lousus:
But when their father reached the beautiful-flowing springs of Lousus,

bathing there, he called to the ox-eyed daughter of purple-crowned
Leto, stretching his hands to the rays of the charioteer sun, [praying]
that his daughters be led out from this terrible madness. (95-103)34
Once we perceive the organizing principle behind the mythological material of Bac-
chylides' Ode 11, we recognize its contents and structure as very similar to those of
Pindar's Olympian 7. In the Pindaric ode, Tlepolemus, the murderous founder of
Rhodes, provides the mythological model for Diagoras, the boxing victor; each
receives civic honors as compensation for their deeds. In Bacchylides' Ode 11 a
similar set of parallels operates. Just as Proetus was denied his home city because of
a quarrel, and just as his daughters were sent into a year-long wandering exile
because of a quarrel with Hera, so Alexidamus was deprived of a victory at
Olympia because of a difference of opinion with the judges. But for each, out of
this struggle comes a new civic construction—a city or a Panhellenic victory. The
intermediary myth of the daughters of Proetus and Artemis provides the purifying
or civilizing context that sets the terms for comparing victor and city founder.35
Both Bacchylides and Pindar invoke the city founder as a source of praise for the
victor, and each conceptualizes a victory and a colony as comparable compensation
for toil and risk. Both poems combine praise for athletic victory with other stories
of foundations.
As a final comment on the colonial context of Ode 11, the very structure of the
poem depends on the coincidence of temples to Artemis in Arcadia and in the vie-
tor's home town of Metapontum, for yet another colonization account within the
ode allows Bacchylides to travel from one site to another. At the end of the poem
he explains that the cult of Artemis was brought to Magna Graecia with the original
Achaean settlers:
From there you [Artemis] too followed the Achaean warrior men to the
horse-raising city, and with good fortune you inhabit Metapontum, O
golden mistress of the people. (113-17)
Metapontum was founded by Achaeans returning from the Trojan War, as Bac-
chylides tells us in the next few lines (118-23). The colonists built a temple to
Artemis by the sweet waters of Casa, and Bacchylides thus reminds us that
colonists brought the worship of their gods with them from their mother city. The
temple of Artemis, common to both mother city and colony, becomes the point of
transition from the mythic setting back to the present-day occasion; it brings Bac-
chylides to the victor's native city.
The account of an angry murderer who then founds a colony may seem at first
to be an unlikely source of praise for the successful boxer Diagoras of Rhodes after
an Olympic victory. Our discussion of Pythian 5, however, has shown how valu-
able the analogy between victor and founder can be for the epinician poet in search
of ways to unite the victor with his city in praise. In addition, archaic colonial dis-
course reveals a strong ideological link between purification and colonization, and
the key to this analogy lies not in the murder itself, but in the two-step process of
murder followed by purification. The murderer is not only a source of pollution, but
once purified, he assumes a new constructive value as founder of the new city. Ath-
letic competition as well provides a framework in which the violent nature of any
constructive act can be expiated in the interest of the public good. Both Olympian 1
and Bacchylides' Ode 11 portray the colonization of a city as a kind of civic
purification. Founding a colony is like being purified for murder, which in turn is
like winning an Olympic victory. In exploring the metaphors, in determining what
exactly these three actions have in common, we construct a more precise picture of
each.
Notes
1. A complete text and translation of both odes can be found in the Appendix.
2. For discussion of this proem and wedding imagery in Pindar, see Lawall 1961; Young
1968 pp. 69-74; Braswell 1976; Verdenius 1976; Rubin 1980; Brown 1984; Verdenius 1987
pp. 40-88; Kurke 1991 pp. 118-25.
3. Drachmann 1964 vol. 1 p. 195. For the image of gold in Pindar, see Duchemin 1955
pp. 193-228.
4. On the deliberate fusion of nymph and place here, see Young 1968 p. 76. The scholia
to this line seem to have fallen prey to Pindar's ambiguity; see Drachmann 1964 vol. 1 pp.
204-5.
5. Young 1968 p. 76; the scholia note that Aphrodite as the mother of Rhodes is Pindar's
innovation.
6. There has been much scholarly debate as to what 8iop9o>oai means. I translate it lit-
erally as "straighten out" in the sense of correcting a previous misunderstanding. Young
1968 p. 78 suggests "elevate to glory"; Norwood 1945 p. 258 n. 3 says "edit." The scholia
gloss it variously as ocKpipoooai or Siaorujqvai; one suggests that Pindar wants to over apolo-
gize (unepanoAoyqoaaGai) for the exile of Tlepolemus.
7. Licymnius is the son of Electryon (Alcmene's father) and his concubine, Midea, thus
half-brother of Alcmene.
8. There are, of course, other differences as well between the two accounts. For further
discussion of Pindar's corrections, see Ruck 1968 pp. 129-32; Young 1968 pp. 82-83;
Defradas 1974.
9. Cf., for example, Horn. Od. 15.272-78. For discussions of murder and its punishment
in the epic poems, see Gagarin 1981 pp. 6-18; Parker 1983 pp. 130-36.
10. Defradas 1974. Unfortunately, as Parker (1983 esp. pp. 138-43) has shown, the evi-
dence is less clear than Defradas would have us believe.
11. Gildersleeve 1890, for example (p. 183), draws such a conclusion about all three
myths in the poem: "In each of these three cases we have a good beginning followed by mis-
fortune, and yet a good ending crowns all." Cf. Norwood 1945 pp. 138—45; Young 1968 pp.
79-81 summarizes the bibliography.
12. Young 1968 p. 77 n. 2 on anoiva in line 16.
13. Cf. Nagy 1990a pp. 140-41 on this ideology of competition with respect to the Tle-
polemeia: "The ideological pattern of these athletic games, compensating for the death of
Tlepolemus' relative, is parallel to what we have seen in the Olympic foot race, supposedly
compensating for the death of Pelops. The pattern can be summarized as follows. In the
mythical past, some catastrophe occurs, typically but not necessarily entailing some form of
guilt or pollution. Then a ritual is instituted to compensate for that event. In contrast with
the one event recounted in the myth, the events of the ritual are to take place seasonally and
into perpetuity."
14. Plutarch (Solon 23.3) tells us that Solon reduced to five hundred drachmas the
reward (Tipr)) which the Athenian treasury paid to Olympian victors.
15. IG I2 77.11-17.
16. Fr. 2 (West, Diehls). Young 1985 pp. 128-33 discusses the monetary or "profes-
sional" rewards won by athletes in the sixth century.
17. Paus. 6.7.1-7. Pausanias mentions that when Diagoras came to Olympia with his
sons, the victorious youths carried their father through the crowd while the other Greeks
pelted him with flowers and congratulated him on his sons.
18. Fontenrose 1968.
19. Herodotus (6.27) describes two disasters in Chios: (1) 98 out of 100 young choir
members sent to Delphi die of the plague, and (2) a school roof collapses and only one out of
120 students survives. He suggests that these accidents were in fact divine portents of the
future troubles of the city.
20. Bohringer 1979 p. 12.
21. See Kurke 1993.
22. See Kurke 1993 on the significance of crowns in epinician poetry.
23. Burnett 1985 p. 113 has also noticed the similarities between these two poems.
24. Strab. 6.1.5.
25. Bacchyl. 11.120-26.

26. See Maehler 1982 pp. 202-5 on the form of the ode; the ring composition is delin-
eated by specific repetition of vocabulary.
27. Maehler 1982 pp. 196-202; Burnett 1985 pp. 108-13.
28. Apollod. Bib. 2.2.2. In the Catalogue version (Fr. 132-33 MW) the girls angered
Hera with their lechery; in the Apollodorus account, they offended Dionysus by refusing to
be initiated into his mysteries. Melampus appears in every version of the myth except Bac-
chylides.
29. Cf. Burnett 1985 p. 109: "The suppression of the seer and the introduction of
Artemis allowed Bacchylides to tell a story that enhanced civic power instead of destroying
it, and he reinforced this effect with a secondary myth in which a city is miraculously cre-
ated." See also Seaford 1988 who discusses this poem from the point of view of its relation to
pre-marital rituals and rites of passage for women.
30. For other versions of the founding of Tiryns, cf. Apollod. Bib. 2.2.1; Ovid Met.
5.236.
31. The drawing of lots in this account is also reminiscent of the colonial tradition of
assigning portions or allotments of land to each of the new settlers.
32. Burnett 1985 p. 112.
33. Here the word VE?<OC;, which Bacchylides uses to refer to the quarrel between the
Argive brothers resulting in the founding of a new city, recalls the competitive atmosphere of
an athletic contest, especially one of a fairly combative nature like Alexidamus' sport,
wrestling. Cf., for example, Pindar's Pyth. 9.31, where he uses VE?KO<; to describe the
wrestling bout between Cyrene and the lion, which has obvious athletic connotations.
34. Burnett 1985 p. 189 n. 18 remarks that it is no accident that Proetus stops at the
springs of Lousus to ask Artemis for his daughters' purification; this choice allows Bac-
chylides to exploit the pun on Aouoov, 96 (cleansing); Auooac;, 102 (madness). The pun
contains both the madness and the cleansing cure.
35. Burnett 1985 pp. 112—13 emphasizes the theme of civilization in the ode. She also
notes that "the boy Alexidamus went out of his city in a kind of sickness of defeat, like the
Proetid girls; he travelled to Delphi, as they to Arcadia, and there he was given a healing
cure, his victory."
8
Pythian 9: Native Appropriations
You have come to this glen as a bridegroom to this girl, and you will bear her
across the sea to a choice garden of Zeus and there you will make her foundress ...
(Find. Pyth. 9.51-54)
In Pythian 5, Pindar weaves aspects of Gyrene's colonial tradition into his victory
ode for Arcesilaus of Cyrene. The poet's characterization of his victory song as a
funeral offering to the city founder and other ancestral heroes of Cyrene establishes
a bond between victor and founder, and this particular analogy takes advantage of
the common epinician trope of describing the victory song as a cult offering. Our
reading of Olympian 7, on the other hand, recognizes Tlepolemus of Rhodes, a mur-
derer, as a model for epinician praise in light of the colonial convention that pre-
sents a purified murderer as the heroized founder of a new city. The use of this
rhetorical strategy within an epinician context suggests that the victorious athlete
receives comparable heroic treatment at the hands of Pindar. Thus, themes and con-
ventions that belong to colonial discourse shape and are shaped by the metaphorical
systems native to the epinician genre. Now, in this chapter, we turn to another
poem composed in honor of a Cyrenean victor, one that draws upon a rather differ-
ent version of the city's colonial origins. Pythian 9 celebrates the victory of Telesi-
crates in the hoplite race at Delphi in 474 B.C.E., and for this occasion, Pindar
recounts the city's origins as the love story of Delphic Apollo and Cyrene. Instead
of invoking Battus as the founder of Cyrene, as he does in Pythians 4 and 5, in this
poem, Pindar conjures up an eponymous nymph famous for her beauty in the Hes-
iodic Catalogue of Women, and in so doing, he uses bilingual wordplay to combine
the themes of colonization and marriage in an epinician context.
Before we investigate the subtleties of colonial representation within Pythian 9,
we should take a brief look at the structure and content of the ode as well as at some
of the scholarship that explores the relationship between the figures of Telesicrates
and Cyrene.1 The poem opens strikingly with Pindar's enthusiastic first-person
wish to praise the lucky man who has been victorious in the hoplite race at Delphi,
136
Pythian 9: Native Appropriations 137
the crown of Cyrene (1-4). This proclamation immediately leads into the main
mythological section, the tale of Apollo and Cyrene, which will occupy the whole
of the first three triads. Pindar begins with a brief synopsis: Apollo snatches
Cyrene from the wilds of Mt. Pelion and takes her to the place where she will rule
as mistress of the lovely and fertile "third root of the world." Aphrodite, herself,
graciously receives the bridal couple and joins the two in common marriage (5—13).
Next Pindar describes Cyrene's background (14-25). She is the daughter of
Hypseus, king of the Lapiths, but she also has family connections that Pindar traces
back to the most basic natural elements; she is related to both Ocean and Earth
(Gaea). A child of nature, she cares nothing for the traditional pastimes of a young
girl of her age—weaving or parties with her friends—instead she prefers the
weapons of men and war. Indeed, because of her passion for outdoor activity,
Apollo catches sight of her wrestling a mighty lion bare-handed (26—28).
The god calls upon Chiron, the centaur, to come out of his cave and to marvel
at the girl. Apollo asks who she is and then inquires rather boldly if it is permitted
for him to have sexual relations with her. Chiron obliges the god of the Delphic
oracle by giving him the prophecy of his marriage to Cyrene, which will culminate
in the birth of their son, Aristaeus. Chiron concludes his view of the future by
telling Apollo that his son will become immortal and live beside the Horae and
Gaea (30-65). Pindar then intervenes in his own voice to remark that the ways of
the gods are swift when they put their minds to a task; on that very day the matter
is accomplished, and Apollo and Cyrene lie together in the golden bedchamber of
Libya (68-69).
Pindar then leads his audience from the myth back to the present victory cele-
bration and closes the third triad with a reference to Telesicrates; he illuminates his
native city, Cyrene, with his victory and brings back fame from Delphi (71-75).
The fourth triad then opens with a transition passage about Theban heroes that
serves as a victory catalogue.2 Pindar closes with the injunction not to forget the
words of the old man of the sea—praise even your enemy if he does well (76-96).
In this way, we return to the theme of praise, and Pindar remarks that when Telesi-
crates competed in athletic games, all the women were eagerly watching him, wish-
ing he could be their husband or son (97-100).
Following this mention of hoped-for marriage, Pindar closes the ode with
another myth that openly combines the two main themes of marriage and athletic
prowess. Antaeus, the king of another Libyan city, Irasa, wishes to marry his
daughter to one of her many suitors. He remembers how Danaus, in Argos, once
upon a time held a contest and married forty-eight daughters before noon. So he,
too, holds a contest and offers his daughter to the swiftest suitor. Alexidamus wins
and parades his bride through the crowds of the Nomads in a celebration of both
marriage and victory, for in this case, they are one and the same (106—25).
At each stage of the poem, the imagery of weddings and marriage prevails.3
Anne Carson argues that Pindar alludes to three different aspects of the Greek mar-
riage ritual in order to develop an analogy between victory and marriage.4 First,
Pindar evokes the act of betrothal, which can be designated in Greek by the term
syyuq or equally by the verb opposeiv. This is the moment when the bride's father
and the bridegroom initially contract to unite their two houses by transferring the
ownership of the bride from one to the other.5 In Pythian 9, at the end of the poem,
the Libyan King Antaeus "joins" the bridegroom to his daughter:
In this way, the Libyan gave a bridegroom, fitting him, to his daughter.
(117-18)
Earlier in the poem, Aphrodite "fits together" the marriage of Apollo and Cyrene in
a similar fashion:
And she [Aphrodite] cast lovely modesty upon their sweet bed, fitting
together a common marriage, mingled in by the god and the daughter of
Hypseus of the wide strength . . . (12-13)
Pindar also evokes the ritual of the bridal procession known as the aywyr)
through which the bride is led from her home and welcomed into her husband's
house by her future mother-in-law.6 At the end of the poem, Alexidamus leads his
newly won bride home through the crowds of Nomads:
There Alexidamus escaped the swift race and taking the pledged girl by
the hand, led her through the crowd of Nomad horsemen. (121-23)7
Earlier in the poem, Chiron predicts that Cyrene will be welcomed as Apollo's
bride by the personification of Libya:
And now wide-meadowed, reverend Libya will receive the famous

nymph kindly in her golden halls. (55-56a)8
Pindar then invokes this marriage imagery to praise the victor when he proclaims
that Telesicrates is welcomed like a bride by Cyrene as he brings home his victory
from Delphi:
Victorious there, he made Cyrene known, and she will receive him
benevolently as he brings desired fame from Delphi to his fatherland,
full of beautiful women. (73-75)9
Cyrene receives the victorious Telesicrates, just as earlier she herself was welcomed
to her new home as a bride by Lady Libya, and the use of ay GO to describe the ath-
lete's return home bringing a longed-for fame with him generates images of wed-
ding processions.
Finally, at the end of the poem, in describing the ritual of pelting the victor with
leaves (cpuAAopoAia), Pindar evokes a third element of the marriage ritual, the
KaTaxuo|jc(TO(. This is the moment at the end of the wedding ceremony when the
bride and groom are led to the hearth of the house and are showered by figs, dates,
cakes, and coins.10 Once Alexidamus has won his bride in the foot race, he leads
her home through the crowds, and the bystanders shower them with crowns and
leaves:
They threw many leaves upon them and crowns, and he received many
wings of earlier victories. (123-24)
In this way, Pindar infuses Pythian 9 with the imagery and vocabulary of the mar-
riage ceremony. He describes Telesicrates' Pythian victory as if it were a marriage,
and he draws distinct parallels between this image and the mythical marriage of
Apollo and Cyrene narrated at the beginning of the ode. Surprisingly, perhaps, Pin-
dar compares Telesicrates not to the groom but to the bride, Cyrene.11 She is, after
all, an athlete of sorts. When Apollo marvels at Gyrene's hunting prowess before
Chiron, he describes her actions with the vocabulary appropriate to Panhellenic vic-
tors. She plays with the weapons of athletic contests, and she wrestles with wild
beasts. Like Carrhotus, the victorious charioteer of Pythian 5, Cyrene competes
with an unflappable mind (aTapfkT vekoc; ayei KEcpaAa, 31).12 In Nemean 7,
Sogenes receives the verses of Pindar as a reward for his agonistic effort (otrroiva
(joxQwv, 16). Similarly, Gyrene's heart is greater than her task ((joxQou <a6un£p6s
vsavic; t*JTop e'xoioa, 31a-32).13 Just as Hippocleas in Pythian 10, victorious in the
double race, enjoys the taste of prizewinning (YEUETOI yap asSAwv, 7), Cyrene has
a taste of boundless strength (ysikTai 6' aA<ac; amipavTou, 35).14 Furthermore,
it is because of her athletic skill that Apollo takes notice of her and falls in love.
Similarly, the women of Cyrene fall in love with Telesicrates as they watch him
compete in the local games. Each one secretly wishes he could be her husband or
son:
Many times they saw you victorious even in the seasonal games of Pal-
las, speechless, each of the young maidens prayed that you would be
her dear husband or [the mothers prayed for you to be] their son, O
Telesicrates,.. . (97-100)
Telesicrates brings home the news of his victory at Delphi like a bride to his mother
city; at the same time, Cyrene, the bride, is portrayed as an athletic victor, and the
final myth clearly mingles the two themes of marriage and victory, for King
Antaeus' wedding for his daughter is itself an athletic contest. But what exactly is
the point of the victory-marriage analogy? Carson suggests that it is Pindar's inten-
tion to show that both marriage and competition are public activities, spectator
sports, so to speak. Marriage provides the model for victory; each rite provides a
way to incorporate the individual into the community. Carson concludes, "In sum-
mary, the point of the analogy between bride and victor is, at least in part, to remind
us that excellence is a public thing, only properly realized in a communal effort."15
Marriage, the joining of two separate houses, is a socializing mechanism; it inte-
grates an outsider into the social structure. Telesicrates' victory is a public event as
well; he brings outside recognition from Delphi to his homeland.16
In Pythian 9, Pindar tells the story of the marriage of Apollo and Cyrene as a
way to praise Telesicrates, the victor, but the rhetorical relationship between mar-
riage and victory is more complex than it first appears, for the marriage of Apollo
and Cyrene also represents the Greek colonization of Cyrene, and as we have seen,
marriage operates within the larger context of Greek colonial representation as a
metaphor to describe founding a city overseas in terms of cross-cultural contact and
civilization. A close look at the language of Pythian 9 will show how Pindar draws
from the rhetoric and imagery associated with marriage to represent a colonial foun-
dation in an epinician context. The poem opens with Pindar's intention to praise
Telesicrates, the victorious athlete in the hoplite race at Delphi:
I wish, announcing with the deep-girdled Charites the bronze-shielded

Pythian victor, to hail Telesicrates, a prosperous man, the crown of
horse-driving Cyrene. (1-4)
This proclamation immediately introduces the main mythological section, the tale
of Apollo and Cyrene, which will occupy the whole of the first three triads. The
word order itself in these opening four lines is worth noticing: the Pythian victory
implicit in the phrase xocAKaoni6a riu0iovi<av together with the fame it brings
move through the victor (6A|3iov av5pa) and extend to the city itself in the form of
a crown (8i6o£inrrou OT£cpavco|ja Kupavac;). Pindar's poem will provide the
mechanism for this transfer of fame and glory; he has chosen a myth that will crown
the city by praising the victor: the foundation of Cyrene.17
The poet then moves economically from the praise of the city Cyrene to a brief
synopsis of the myth about the nymph Cyrene, using as transition a simple relative
pronoun (TOV) that refers to both city and nymph:
[Cyrene] whom the long-haired son of Leto once took from the valleys
of Pelion which echo in the wind, and he brought the wild maiden in a
golden chariot and made her mistress there and caused her to live in the
lovely, flourishing third root of the many-flocked and much-fruited
land. (5-8)
This brief glimpse of Apollo's rape of Cyrene is very similar to the opening scene
of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, which recounts the rape of Persephone at the
hands of Hades:
I begin to sing of Derneter, the fair-haired, holy goddess, herself and

her daughter of the fair ankles, whom Hades snatched, and whom deep-
thundering, wide-browed Zeus gave, [she was taken] away from
golden-sworded, glorious-fruited Demeter when she [Persephone] was
playing with the deep-breasted daughters of Ocean . . . (1-5)
Note the similar use of the relative pronoun to introduce the myth; in addition, in
both poems, a form of apnaCoo occupies the marked position at the beginning of the
line. There are further verbal resonances as well that underscore the fruitfulness of
the land and the association of the young girl with elements of nature: XP U 0 ^>
Pyth. 9.6: xpuoaopou, Horn. Hymn 4; KoXnwv, Pyth. 9.5: paSuKoXnoic;, Horn.
Hymn 5; noXu<apnoTOTa<;, Pyth. 9.7: ayXaoKaprrou, Horn. Hymn 4. In Pythian
9, Cyrene is a granddaughter of Ocean (14-18), and in the Homeric Hymn, Per-
sephone plays with the daughters of Ocean (5). These verbal parallels suggest that
we read the rape of Cyrene told in the opening lines of Pythian 9 in light of the rape
of Persephone, an archetypal myth that both characterizes the violence of marriage
as a symbolic death and equates the life cycle of the female with the agricultural
seasons of the earth. The literary allusion provides a richly resonant context for
Pindar's presentation of the colonial rape of Apollo and Cyrene. In the Homeric
Hymn, Demeter and Persephone are closely allied with the fertility of the land, and
Pindar makes similar associations by personifying the lands of Libya and Cyrene as
mother and daughter-in-law.
To return to Pythian 9, in this brief preview of the myth, Pindar describes the
rape and subsequent marriage of Cyrene as the progressive movement from wilder-
ness to civilization. Pindar highlights the nymph's premarital primitive nature
among the windswept hills of Thessaly in sharp contrast to her future role as mis-
tress of the well-cultivated, fruitful continent of Libya. Apollo grabs a wild maiden
(nap6evov aypoTepav) and takes her to live as mistress (Seonoivav) in a land that
is rich in both flocks and fruit (noXuijqXou <ai noXuKapnoroTac;). The act of
marriage, violent as it has been presented, has civilized her, and her defloration has
caused the land to blossom.18 Pindar's word order again conflates the nymph with
the land; the blooming adjective (BaAAoioav) can modify either, and its lack of
clear referent underscores the important link between a woman's erotic flowering
and the fruition of the earth.
Pindar backtracks a bit at this point and elaborates upon Gyrene's heritage and
lifestyle before she was seen by Apollo. Again, Pindar consistently portrays the
nymph as the embodiment of nature; she is the child of the Ocean and the Earth:
the daughter of Hypseus of the wide strength, who was king at that time
of the insolent Lapiths, a second-generation hero, descended from
Ocean, whom the Naead, Creousa, bore once in the glorious valleys of
Pindus when she, the daughter of Earth, took delight in the bed of
Peneus. (13-17)19
In addition to being born from the archetypal elements of Ocean and Earth, as a
young girl Cyrene rejects the habits and occupations of civilized, acculturated
women and instead acts very much like a young Artemis. The adjective, aypo
TEpav, which Pindar uses in line 6 to introduce Cyrene is, in fact, a cult title of
Artemis, and the following description reinforces the connection:20
But she cared neither about the back-and-forth ways of weaving nor did
she like the delights of meals at home with her friends. Rather, fighting
with bronze spears and sword she slew wild beasts, providing much
pleasant peace for her father's cattle . . . (18-23)
A young girl's marriage was conceptualized as the passage from the realm of
Artemis to that of Aphrodite, and by characterizing Cyrene here as an Artemis
figure, Pindar highlights her premarital status.21 The wild and precultured nymph,
Cyrene, catches Apollo's attention and interest while engaged in an act of combat
also reminiscent of Artemis the huntress. Apollo catches sight of Cyrene as she
wrestles a wild lion bare handed, without the benefit of weapons:
The broad-quivered one came upon her once wrestling alone with a
fierce lion without weapons, far-darting Apollo. (26-28)
Cyrene wrestles alone (pouvav), and Pindar highlights Cyrene's lack of weapons by
equipping Apollo both with his broad quiver and his far-darting epithet.
In sum, Pindar characterizes Cyrene prior to her marriage to Apollo as a wild
nymph of nature, the child of Ocean and Earth, a veritable Artemis; she rejects the
pastimes of civilized women and prefers to wrestle animals outdoors. The wildness
of Cyrene before marriage highlights her subsequent transformation at the hands of
Apollo into the personification of a highly fruitful and fertile land. This transforma-
tion, however, no matter how ultimately productive, is not a peaceful one, and Pin-
dar incorporates agricultural imagery familiar from epithalamial poetry at this point
in the ode to represent the violence of marriage. Apollo calls upon Chiron, the cen-
taur, to tell him who this marvelous young girl is. He first asks who her people are;
literally, "from what stock was she torn" (TTOIOK; 8' anoorraoGEToa cpuTAac;, 33)?
The god continues even more graphically, though, to ask if he might have his way
with the young nymph:
Is it permitted to lay my famous hand on her and to cut down the

honeyed flower from her bed? (36-37)
Commentators have been greatly disturbed by what they consider the uncharacteris-
tically and unnecessarily graphic and violent language that Apollo uses here to
express his sexual desire for the nymph Cyrene. Indeed, this language is violent
and must be recognized as such and not glossed over or effaced through
euphemism.22 Pindar chooses a harsh agricultural metaphor to characterize the vio-
lence of defloration. His word choice again calls to mind the passages from Sap-
pho's epithalamial poetry that describe a girl's loss of virginity in terms of beautiful
ripe fruit being plucked or purple flowers trampled by heavy boots.23 In fact, at the
end of Pythian 9, Pindar employs another agricultural image to describe the suitors'
desire for Antaeus' beautiful daughter:
They wanted to pluck the blossoming fruit of her golden-crowned

youth. And her father produced a rather famous marriage for his
daughter . . . (109-12)
It is a commonplace of wedding poetry to acknowledge the violence inherent in
marriage from a woman's point of view, and this is obviously part of what lies
behind Pindar's use of agricultural imagery to portray both the suitors' desire for
Antaeus' daughter and Apollo's lust for Cyrene.
But the colonial context of this poem causes the metaphor to resonate even more
deeply. The violence of marriage, as represented through this agricultural image,
evokes the violence of colonization as well—violence to the landscape and to the
native populations. It is worth noting the larger semantic range of the verb (KsTpou)
Pindar uses in Apollo's question about Cyrene. It can mean to cut short or clip, as
one shears hair as part of the rite of mourning; it can also refer to the process of rav-
aging a landscape.24 In Herodotus, the verb is used to describe the clearing of a
plain for cavalry action prior to battle (5.63); of the destruction wrecked by the Per-
sians upon the uncooperative people of Carystus (6.99), and of Xerxes' army hack-
ing away at the Macedonian mountains so that his men might move through them
(7.131). Clearly, Pindar's use of the verb here to describe the sexual deflowering of
Cyrene is meant to remind the listener that this is no ordinary marriage but one
which represents a greater civilizing project—the colonization of a Greek city in
Libya.
Apollo, in posing his question to Chiron, highlights the bare facts of sexual rela-
tions between men and women. Chiron's response, however, presents the more cul-
turally acceptable, civilized characterization.25 His opening words enigmatically
invoke the power of persuasion in matters of love: "Hidden are the keys of wise
Peitho, the keys of holy loves" (Kpunrai KAafSsc; EVTI oocpac;/ fleiSoGc; kpav
cpiAoTOTcov, 39-39a). Why mention Peitho here? On vase paintings of marriage
processions, a personified Peitho is often portrayed together with Aphrodite as an
attendant of the bride. A red-figure skyphos in Boston, for example, depicts such a
marriage scene, and the details of the representation help explain Chiron's puzzling
remark26 (Figure 8.1). The cup depicts a wedding procession on foot with the groom
leading the way, firmly gripping the bride's wrist as he looks back at her. Eros hov-
ers in front of the bride; she is also accompanied by Aphrodite. The aggressive ges-
ture of the groom seizing the bride seems to characterize the scene as an abduction,
but behind Aphrodite stands Peitho, and her presence simultaneously suggests that
the bride has been persuaded to go willingly with the groom. This is no ordinary
bride and groom; the wedding couple is identified as Paris and Helen. This icono-
graphical convention reflects the belief, common in literary contexts as well, that it
is the power of Persuasion, the rhetoric of Aphrodite, which negotiates a smooth
transition from the violence of a girl's loss of virginity to a more civilized view of
the legitimate relations between men and women.27 Pindar incorporates this same
transitive power of Persuasion at this point in Pythian 9 as well, for when Chiron
describes the future marriage of Apollo and Cyrene, we see that it will be very fruit-
ful and productive indeed:
Figure 8.1. Paris abducting Helen. Attic Red Figure skyphos (Side A), signed by Macron as
painter and Hieron as potter, ca. 490-480 B.C.E. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 13.186. Fran-
cis Bartlett Fund. (Photo courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.)
And now wide-meadowed, reverend Libya will receive the famous

nymph kindly in her golden halls, where at once she will make her a
present of a portion of land to be lawfully hers, land which is neither
lacking in plants of all fruits nor unfamiliar to beasts. There she will
bear a child, whom the famous Hermes will take from the mother and
bear to the well-throned Horae and Gaea. (55-61)
While Apollo's question characterizes marriage and colonization as a kind of rape,
Chiron's reassuring response presents the flip side and describes both marriage and
colonization as fruitful and productive institutions. No mention of any violence or
conflict between Greeks and indigenous peoples here; instead, the native landscape
is personified as Lady Libya, graciously receiving the famous nymph within her
golden halls; she gives her as a wedding gift title to the land which is productive of
all kinds of fruits and flocks.28 Cyrene, herself imitating the fecundity of the land,
will give birth to a child as well, Aristeas, who immortalized by the Horae, Hermes
and Gaea, will prove to be a charm to men and an ever-present protector of flocks.
This conclusion to the colonial marriage of Cyrene and Apollo, productive of both
city and son, is reminiscent of the colonial oracle from Croton's colonial tradition,
which similarly blurs the acts of producing a new colony and producing children.
The oracle, we remember, tells Myscellus that he will have children once he founds
the colony of Croton.29 A successful marriage is measured in terms of legitimate
children, and the prosperity of a colonial settlement similarly depends upon the
colonists' ability to master the land, to transform the virgin territory into a produc-
tive landscape—a city. And so, as in Pythian 9, the metaphor of marriage together
with the feminization of the land becomes a useful and productive way to describe
colonization.
Pindar uses the discourse of rape and marriage to express the similar collocation
of violence and civilization inherent in founding a colony overseas. In fact, he
adapts what we have identified as the plot of the noncolonial foundation tale, erotic
conquest, to fit a colonial context. In Chapter 4, we discussed the two distinct, but
often overlapping, narrative patterns that recount noncolonial and colonial city
foundations. Noncolonial foundations are often told as the rape of a local nymph by
an Olympian deity; the name of the city is thus derived either from the nymph or
from the offspring produced from this union. The colonial narrative, on the other
hand, describes overseas colonization in terms of a civic crisis that forces the
colonist(s) to leave home and consult the Delphic oracle. Apollo then advises
founding a new city overseas, and the expedition takes place. Once the colonial
narrative arrives at the moment of foundation, however, its narrative agenda coin-
cides to a great extent with that of a noncolonial foundation, and for this reason, the
rape (or marriage) plot often survives within individual colonial tales. As we have
seen, the erotic conquest plot merges with colonization tales in several different
ways. Perhaps most common, the erotic plot is displaced from the tale itself and put
into the text of the colonization oracle that motivates the city foundation. Within
the colonial tale that describes the Corinthian settlement of Syracuse, for example,
the oracle recounts the foundation as the love story of Alpheus and Arethusa.
Another solution to this narrative problem appears in Pindar's Olympian 1 where
Pindar separates out two different stages of Rhodes' early history: the foundation
of the island, told as the marriage of Helius and Rhodes, and its subsequent colo-
nization, led by Tlepolemus, a murderer sent into exile by Delphic Apollo.
Now, within Pythian 9, Pindar offers a third solution to the same narrative chal-
lenge. This time he conflates the two different plots and tells Gyrene's colonization
story as the marriage of an eponymous nymph and Apollo, the patron deity of colo-
nization. In other words, Pindar adapts the marriage plot to address the colonial
agenda. By making Apollo the bridegroom, he includes the important role that Del-
phi plays in archaic colonization. He also addresses the issue of movement—the
rape of Cyrene is not a local event but a transoceanic one. Apollo spies Cyrene
wrestling lions in the hills of Thessaly and brings her to the site that bears her name.
In creating his Pythian 9 version of the colonization of Cyrene, Pindar unites a
Greek tradition about a nymph Cyrene with the foundation tradition of a Libyan city
of the same name.
To disentangle the different threads of this narrative web, let us look first at the
noncolonial Greek mythological tradition. The scholiasts commenting on Pythian 9
explain that Pindar takes his myth from Hesiod's Catalogue of Women:
Or like her, beautiful Cyrene in Phthia; she used to live beside the
water of the Peneus, having her beauty from the Graces.30
The Hesiodic tradition, it would seem, is limited to the mention of Cyrene, a beauti-
ful nymph who lived beside the banks of the Peneus; she married Apollo and had a
son Aristaeus. It is very likely that Pindar invented the other details—the lion, the
prophecy, the conversation between Apollo and Chiron—specifically for the occa-
sion of Pythian 9. In later literature, Aristaeus has no connection with Libya; in
fact, even in Pindar's account, he is immediately taken back to Greece. In Pythian
9, then, Pindar takes this Hesiodic tradition set in Thessaly about a young nymph,
Cyrene, and transforms it into a colonial epinician ode for a victor from a Libyan
city called Cyrene.31
A colonially charged reading of Pythian 9 is reinforced by additional parallels
between this version of the colonization of Cyrene and the tale of Battus as founder
that Pindar tells in Pythians 4 and 5. In fact, many details of Cyrene's adventure as
founding deity correspond quite closely to Pindar's account of Battus in Pythian 5;
the two accounts are structural doublets. Like Battus in Pythian 5, for example,
Cyrene has a successful encounter with a lion prior to founding the colony that will
take her name.32 Each founder has a unique personal trait: Battus stutters, and
Cyrene is an athletic huntress, and in both cases, it is this distinguishing characteris-
tic that brings them in contact with the lion and accounts for their victory over the
beast. Battus scares the lion away with his overseas voice, and Cyrene wrestles it to
death.33 Furthermore, this unique personal trait brings each potential founder in
contact with Apollo. Battus consults Apollo at the Delphic oracle about his stutter
and is told to lead a colony to Libya. Cyrene catches the attention of the god him-
self as she struggles with the lion. Apollo falls instantly in love and carries her
overseas to be the eponymous foundress of Cyrene.
In addition, both Battus and Cyrene have names with bilingual etymologies; for
each, one name has roots in the local Libyan tradition, the other in Greek culture
and language. The Greeks understood "Battus" to mean either "the stutterer" from
the Greek verb "to stutter" (|3aTTapR£iv) or as the local Cyrenean term for king.
Similarly, either Cyrene's name refers to the name of a nymph mentioned in Hes-
iod's Catalogue of Women, or it can be explained as a local place-name. There was
a good deal of speculation about the origin of Cyrene's name even in ancient times.
Stephanus of Byzantium records the two possible etymologies: "Cyrene: city of
Libya, from Cyrene, the daughter of Hypseus, or from the native spring Cyra."34
Callimachus also plays with both etymologies in his Hymn to Apollo, and he tells us
that the spring of Apollo in Cyrene is called Cyra.35 Pindar, in effect, "retro-moti-
vates" a Greek etymology for the Libyan place-name. He imports Cyrene from the
Hesiodic Catalogue and establishes her in Libya as an eponymous nymph. Like
Battus, her name is significant in two languages.
Another episode in Pythian 9, the exchange between Apollo and the centaur
Chiron, resonates as well with themes from colonial discourse. Leonard Woodbury
has pointed out that in this poem Apollo takes on the characteristics of a typical
young student of the wise teacher Chiron, a Jason or an Achilles; he is here a young
man in love.36 Given the vivid colonial coloring of the poem, however, the charac-
terization of Apollo has much more depth. In asking Chiron for advice, Apollo
assumes the role of a young man seeking information from the Delphic oracle,
information that may lead to the foundation of a new colony.
Several scholars have already remarked upon the Delphic nature of Chiron's
response.37 His opening words, for example, about the "hidden keys of wise Pei-
tho's loves" are typically enigmatic. The context of competition also supports the
Delphic reading of this passage; Chiron's enigmatic response is offered genially as
his entry in a contest of cunning (MH T I V €av/ £u6uc; aijdpkTo, 38-39). He
describes Apollo's prophetic powers in terms of nature's limitlessness:
You who know the proper end of all things and all ways: as many
spring leaves as the ground sends up, and as many sands as, in the sea
and in rivers, are disturbed by waves and gusts of wind, and what will
happen, and whence it will be, you know well. (44-49)
This speech with its oblique use of metaphor and abstraction evokes the famous
oracle delivered to Croesus in which the Pythia describes her omniscience as
knowledge of the quantity of sands in the desert and the measure of the sea.38
In addition to being enigmatically "Delphic," both the structure and the content
of the exchange between Chiron and Apollo are familiar from our reading of colo-
nial tales. Future colonists consulted the Delphic oracle about a noncolonial matter,
often about marriage or children, but were told in reponse to found a Greek city
overseas.39 This is exactly the kind of question that Apollo puts to Chiron; he asks
if it is permitted for him to have sexual relations with Cyrene. Chiron's responds
that yes, he may, and he predicts that the union will culminate both in the founda-
tion of a new city and in the birth of a new son. In addition, as Chiron begins his
"oracular response," he first repeats Apollo's question:
You ask about the family of this girl, O lord? (43^44)

Repetition of the question in the first line of the response is a stylistic device com-
mon to many surviving Delphic oracles.40 In fact, one of the responses that
Herodotus preserves for us about the founding of Cyrene begins similarly, "Battus,
you have come on account of your voice."
Most colonists were young men; they would consult the Delphic oracle about
the important events of their lives, and they were advised to found colonies on for-
eign soil. The style of Chiron's speech shares many characteristics with this type of
oracle received by Greek colonists. The interesting aspect of Chiron's prophecy to
Apollo is that the god is not told to found a colony in the place of a response about
children or marriage. Rather, the act of marriage and that of founding a new colony
are one and the same. Within the content of the prophecy itself, Pindar also
includes specific allusions to the colonization of Cyrene. Chiron tells Apollo that
he will bear Cyrene to the exquisite garden of Zeus. There he will make her the
foundress of the city together with "an island people:"
You have come to this glen as a bridegroom for this girl, and you will
bear her across the sea to a choice garden of Zeus and there you will
make her foundress, having gathered a host of island people to a hill
surrounded by a plain. (51-55)41
It is clear that these island people are the Theraeans, the Greek founders of
Cyrene.42 Furthermore, when Chiron predicts that Cyrene will receive a portion of
land to be rightfully hers (55-58), Pindar's language calls to mind the tradition
of dividing up allotments of land among the colonists once they mark out the site
for their new city.
Within the epinican context of Pythian 9, Pindar blends two different tradi-
tions—the Hesiodic tradition about a nymph Cyrene and the colonial legend of
Gyrene's foundation—into a kind of narrative pun that appropriates a Libyan city's
name and reinterprets it within a Greek poetic tradition of rape. This narrative dou-
ble entendre is reinforced on the linguistic level with another example of the kind of
wordplay characteristic of Greek colonial discourse. Once Chiron completes his
prophecy to Apollo, Pindar resumes the narrative in his own voice to make the tran-
sition from the mythological past back to the contemporary occasion, the victory of
Telesicrates. He first remarks that "the ways of the gods are swift" when they put
their minds to a task; the marriage of Apollo and Cyrene was consummated on that
very day:
He [Apollo] mingled with her in the very gold bedchamber of Libya,

where she [Cyrene] is guardian of a most beautiful city and one famous
in contests. Even now at Pytho, the son of Carneiades commingled her
with beautifully blossoming luck. (68-72)
As a result, Cyrene rules a most beautiful city (KaAA(oTav), famous for its athletes,
and Telesicrates celebrates this most beautiful city and its beautiful eponymous
foundress in victory. As we noted earlier, Pindar likes to take advantage of the
proper name Cyrene, which can denote both a nymph and a city. The poet uses the
ambiguous feminine pronoun (viv) again here, as in the beginning of the poem, to
effect a transition back from the myth to the victory celebration. This passage,
however, does more than provide Pindar with a clever poetic transition; it links the
three thematic motifs of the poem: marriage, victory, and colonization.
First, Cyrene will rule a most beautiful city. This is especially appropriate for a
nymph who, as Hesiod tells us, is beautiful and who, in fact, gets her beauty from
the Graces themselves (XapiTtov ano KaAAo^ s'xouoa). The city is beautiful
because the nymph is beautiful; they have the same name. Pindar here nods briefly
to his Hesiodic source and reinforces the mythological connection a few lines later
when he describes Telesicrates' homeland as full of beautiful women (<aAAr
y u v a i K i naTpa, 74). There is an inherent connection between the beauty of the
city's foundress and the continued beauty of its female occupants.
But Pindar suggests another reason for the beauty of the city—Cyrene is beauti-
ful because the colony is descended from the most beautiful city of all, Callista.
Herodotus tells us that it was colonists from the island of Thera who settled Cyrene.
Thera's name, however, was originally Callista. After settling there, the Spartan
founder, Theras, changed the name and called the island after himself, Thera.43 The
people from this island then colonized Cyrene. Pindar, himself, is aware of this tra-
dition, for in Pythian 4, he, too, refers to the island settled by the Lacedaemonians
as Callista:
For then it was that the race of Euphemus was sown forever, and they
mixed with the Lacedaemonian race and in time colonized the island of
Callista. (256-S9)44
In the Pythian 9 passage that concludes the myth of Apollo and Gyrene's colonial
marriage, Pindar describes Cyrene as a "most beautiful city" (KaAAioTav) and plays
on the original name of the colonizing city of Cyrene, Callista.
We have already seen what a strong role ambiguous language plays in the colo-
nial narrative as well as in other epinician odes of Pindar. Most commonly associ-
ated with Apollo and the Delphic oracle, colonial puns and riddles provide the
Greeks with a compact way to infuse their foundation account with multiple levels
of meaning, and Pindar's use of the Callista pun in Pythian 9 is best understood in
this context of colonial discourse. For comparative purposes, we can take a look at
a colonial oracle from the foundation tradition of the Parian colony of Thasos,
which hinges upon wordplay very similar to that of the Callista pun.45 Telesicles,
the poet Archilochus' father, receives the following oracle from Delphi:
46
There are two different ways to translate this oracle. We can follow Parke and
Wormell:
Announce to the Parians, Telesicles, that I bid you found a conspicuous

city in the island of Eeria.47
Or we can be more literal in our translation:
Announce to the Parians, Telesicles, that I bid you found a sunny city
on the misty island.
The ambiguity stems from the fact that the island which the Parians colonized and
subsequently named Thasos was originally called Eeria ('HEpIq), or Greek for
"misty."48 The oracle deliberately calls attention to the literal meaning of 'HEplq
because of the adjective chosen to refer to the city that will be founded. It is
EuSdsAov, a meteorological term that means exposed to the sun, or sunny, the very
opposite of qEpin, misty.49
This is exactly the kind of wordplay that Pindar incorporates into Pythian 9 with
his pun on Callista; he exploits the literal meaning of the precolonial proper name of
the island. Furthermore, keeping in mind the larger epinician context of this ety-
mology, we realize that by creating a colonial pun of this type, Pindar is able to
unite the Hesiodic tradition of the beautiful nymph, Cyrene, with the colonial tradi-
tion which says that men from Thera, formerly Callista, settled the city.50 Cyrene
rules a most beautiful city and one famous in athletic contests. It is this precise
phrase that marks the point of transition from the mythological section of the poem
to Pindar's contemporary goal of praising the Pythian victory of Telesicrates. Con-
sequently, through the wordplay on Callista, Pindar is able to merge the three differ-
ent poetic programs that he has been skillfully juggling up to this point: the praise
of the Pythian victor, the Hesiodic tale of the marriage of Apollo and Cyrene, and
the colonial narrative of Gyrene's foundation by the Theraeans.
A substantial focus of Pythian 9 is Gyrene's role as the eponymous foundress of
the Libyan city. Her beauty explains why the city of Cyrene is the most beautiful
and how it came to be famous for its beautiful maidens. Her athletic prowess moti-
vates the colonization itself, and it accounts for the city's subsequent glory in ath-
letic competitions both at home and abroad.51 In both these fundamental respects,
Telesicrates resembles Cyrene. He is an extremely successful athlete, and his phys-
ical beauty causes women of all ages to desire him. In addition, Gyrene's marriage
to Apollo, a union of nymph and god, becomes a model for Telesicrates' homecom-
ing reunion, his reintegration into the Cyrenean community upon returning home
victorious from Delphi. Finally, the specifically colonial nature of the marriage of
Apollo and Cyrene adds a new dimension to the praise of the victor, for the fame
and importance of Cyrene as city founder extends to the Pythian victor, Telesi-
crates. We have seen how Pindar develops this same comparison in Pythian 5 and
Olympian 1 between the founder and the Panhellenic victor. So here, too, Pindar
emphasizes the similarities between Cyrene and Telesicrates; each brings fame to
the city of Cyrene from Pythian Apollo and Delphi.
Pindar closes the ode with yet another marriage—one which unites within the
rhetorical bonds of holy matrimony both victory and the cross-cultural contact that
is bora of colonization. When King Antaeus decides to marry his beautiful daugh-
ter to one of her many suitors, he recalls the similar situation of Danaus of Argos,
who held an athletic contest and married forty-eight daughters. So, too, Antaeus
holds a race and gives his daughter in marriage to the Greek victor, Alexidamus.
Thus Pindar embeds within a description of one Greco-Libyan marriage an allusion
to the Danaids born into a family famous for its hybrid, Greco-Egyptian heritage.
Descended from the "founding rapes" of Zeus and lo and Poseidon and Libya, the
Danaids' own flight from Egypt to Argos to seek protection from their suitor
cousins reverses lo's earlier maddened migration from Greece to Egypt.
Significantly, in each generation, it is the women in this family who move back and
forth from Greece to Egypt—a mediating force, they are the source of contact
between the two cultures.52
Thus the final myth of Pythian 9, the marriage of Alexidamus to a Libyan bride,
introduced as yet another source of praise for his descendant Telesicrates, picks up
the complicated themes of marriage and colonization that Pindar weaves into this
victory ode. Marriage maps out the common ground occupied by a Greek colonial
tale and the commemoration of Panhellenic victory, an occasion for the continued
celebration of Gyrene's civic (and Greek) identity. The final, victorious marriage
that unites a Greek athlete and Libyan woman, a union anticipated and legitimated
by the symbolic, colonial marriage of Apollo and Cyrene, caps the celebration of
Teleiscrates' victory for Cyrene at the Pythian games. Because of their innately
civic orientation, colonial legends have a powerful rhetorical impact in epinician
poetry—Pindar's victory odes are, in fact, civic celebrations, and he appropriates
themes and metaphors from colonial discourse and invests them with epinician
significance. Pythian 9 reveals the extent to which the Panhellenic games function
as part of a larger arena in which Greek and native compete to define Gyrene's civic
identity.
Notes
1. The complete text of the poem and a translation can be found in the Appendix.
2. For discussion of the victory catalogue and how this section fits in with the rest of the
ode, see Rose 1931; Bundy 1962 pp. 17-18; Burton 1962; Peron 1976; Kirkwood 1981.
3. For a discussion of the marriage imagery in Pythian 9, see Woodbury 1972; Carson
1982; Kohnken 1985; Stoddart 1990 pp. 62-67; Kurke 1991 pp. 172-80. For broader, more
general discussions of the institution and ideology of marriage, see Collignon 1904 pp.
1639-54; Wolf 1944; Redfield 1982; Vernant 1988; Oakley and Sinos 1993. On wedding
songs, see Hague 1983.
4. Carson 1982 pp. 121-25. Kohnken 1985 pp. 97-98 also argues for the analogy
between victory and marriage in this poem.
5. Stoddart (1990 pp. 62-67) argues that the transfer of Cyrene from her clan to that of
Apollo, with Chiron acting as her legal guardian, lies behind the use of marriage imagery in
Pythian 9. Pindar alludes to the ritual of the eyyur) in the proem of Olympian 1 as well. For
the importance of this ritual for Greek marriage, see Collignon 1904 pp. 1640-42; Wolf 1944
pp. 51-53; Vernant 1988 pp. 55-77; Oakley and Sinos 1993.
6. Cf. Collignon 1904 p. 1651 on ayojyq; Oakley and Sinos 1993 on wedding processions.
7. Cf. lines 118-20. The characterization of Alexidamus grasping the bride by the hand
calls to mind the iconographical tradition of representing the groom with his hand upon the
bride's wrist (xtTp in] <otpnco) on vase paintings of wedding processions. See note 26 for
bibliography.
8. Cf. line 11 where Aphrodite welcomes the bridal couple. On the significance of
8exoH ai f°r the analogue between victory and marriage, see Kohnken 1985 pp. 96-97.
Heath 1988 argues for 5£x°H ai as evidence of the reception motif, receiving the KGOJJOC;, in
Pindar.
9. Cf. Pind. Pyth. 5.27-29, where Carrhotus, the charioteer, brings back (oiycov) Vic-
tory, obviously like a bride, instead of Excuse, the daughter of Latethinking. Kohnken 1985
p. 107, commenting on line 118, observes that the bride and victory appear to be identical.
10. Burton (1962 p. 59) sees a reference to the cpuXXopoAia here; the ritual of showering
the victor with leaves is depicted on a vase by Oltus, see Richter (1958) fig. 35; see also Paus.
6.7.3. Carson (1982 pp. 123-24), however, argues that these lines do more than refer to the
cpuAXofBoMa ceremony celebrating a victorious athlete. "Pindar allows Alexidamus' victory
and his marriage to converge; upon the cpuAAopoMa is projected a rite of <OTaxuo|jaTa in
the rich image that ends the poem." See Collignon 1904 p. 1652 and Oakley and Sinos 1993
on KaTaxuo|jo(TO(.
11. Carson 1982 p. 124.
12. Pind. Pyth. 5.51: aTap3eT cppsvi.
13. For M°x9oc;, cf. Pind. Ol. 8.7; Ol. 10.93; Pyth. 2.30; Nem. 5.48; Nem. 8.31;
Isthm. 1.46.
14. For ysueToi, cf. Pind. Nem. 3.42; Nem. 6.24; Isthm. 1.21; Isthm. 5.20. Pindar also
uses epinician language to describe the calm peace (dpqvav) that Cyrene provides for her
father's cattle as a result of her athletic encounters; for eipqvn, cf. Nem. 1.69; Ol. 13.7.
15. Carson 1982 p. 128.
16. Kurke 1991 pp. 159-80 shows how the image of marriage in its social context as a
unifying contract between two different households is an appropriate metaphor for the epini-
cian contract as well. It works as part of a larger system of gift exchange between two
houses. In the proem of Pind. Ol. 1, for example, the marriage simile implies a bond between
poet and patron that is comparable to that of those related by marriage. See also Brown
1984; he argues that both the bride and the victory ode function as gifts that provide immor-
tality—a bride through children, an ode through poetry.
17. For various other readings of the first four lines of the poem, see Farnell 1930 vol. 2
p. 202; Bundy 1962 pp. 20-21; Kirkwood 1982 p. 222; Kohnken 1985 p. 71.
18. For this transition from nature to culture, see Robbins 1978 pp. 97-100; Kirkwood
1981 p. 222; Carson 1982 pp. 124-28; Woodbury 1982 pp. 251-54; Kurke 1991 p. 174.
19. Cyrene is related to Oceanus through her father Hypseus, who is his grandson. Pin-
dar borrows this Cyrene myth from Hesiod, and it is interesting to note that while Hesiod
describes Gyrene's relation to Peneus as geographical (she used to live beside the Peneus
river), Pindar makes the relationship a genealogical one. See Robbins 1978 p. 94.
20. For Artemis'cult title: Horn.//. 21.471; Bacch. 5.123; 11.37. Cf. Carey 1981 p. 68.
As Fraenkel (1973 pp. 442—43 n. 4) has observed, the description of Cyrene here is also
evocative of Atalanta, esp. in Theognis 1287-94. Such a resonance is particularly appropri-
ate given the marriage competition in the final myth of Pythian 9.
21. Cf. Oakley and Sinos 1993. Artemis is most often named as the recipient of pro-
teleia, offerings conceptualized as compensation paid to Artemis for the bride's upcoming
marriage. The bride must have Artemis' consent; the Callisto myth suggests what happens
without it. See also Sourvinou-Inwood 1987a pp. 141-47 on the connections between Artemis
and marriage. See Vernant 1991 pp. 195-219 for a discussion of Artemis' role in Greek myth
and cult, especially with respect to her role as intermediary between the wild and the civi-
lized and for the important connections between hunting and sexuality.
22. See, for example, Winnington-Ingram 1969; Burton 1962 p. 44 notes that nowhere
else does Pindar use such precise visual images; he suggests that the imagery was generated
by the outdoor setting of the scene; Kohnken 1985 discusses the issue at length and reads the
scene in the light of the "Seduction of Zeus" in Book 14 of the Iliad. Carey 1981 p. 76
refuses to see any hint of violence in this passage.
23. Sappho F 105a and c L-P.
24. Anne Burnett has suggested to me that there might also be an allusion here to the
cutting of hair as part of initiation rites. Cyrene is thus characterized (in addition to being
described as a hunter) as a young man about to cross over into manhood. As often in Pindar,
I think we can (and must) have it all ways—death, initiation, and ravishment are all a part of
the broad semantic range of Kdpu, and all can be equally present in our reading of its use in
this particular context.
25. Chiron's response has provoked as much critical controversy as Apollo's question,
if not more. First of all, what is Chiron doing here? It is generally agreed that his appearance
in the Apollo and Cyrene myth is a Pindaric innovation. Robbins 1978 argues that Chiron, an
ambiguous figure himself, functions as a mediating force between nature and culture.
Calame 1990 p. 306 prefers to see Chiron as a mediator between the savage wilds of Thes-
saly and the pastoral world of Apollo. Indeed, Cyrene, as we have seen, is closely allied with
the elemental forces of nature; she inhabits a wild environment. Apollo, on the other hand,
represents the process of civilization and cultivation of flocks and crops. Chiron brings the
two together.
26. A red-figure skyphos signed by Makron and the potter Hieron (ARV2 458,1 and
1654).. See Oakley and Sinos 1993 for a description of this vase. For more on the icono-
graphical convention of "hand upon wrist," see Jenkins 1983; Sourvinou-Inwood 1987a;
Oakley and Sinos 1993 pp. 79-81.
27. Cf. Zeitlin 1986 pp. 139—40 on the political connotations of persuasion with the
Danaid myth and Redfleld 1982 p. 198: "the power of Aphrodite is the power of persua-
sion." See also Seaford 1987 p. 114 n. 94.
28. Cf. Carey 1981 p. 81: "It is interesting to observe Pindar's softening of harsh histor-
ical fact; according to Herodotus (4.159), the Cyreneans carved out a large area of Libya by
force; here Libya gives her land gladly." On p. 82, Carey highlights the legalistic language
used to characterize Libya's gift of land to Cyrene.
29. Diod. 8.17.1. This oracle is cited and discussed in more detail in Chapter 4.
30. Drachmann 1964 vol. 2 p. 221. Servius, in his commentary on the Georgics of Vir-
gil (1.14), mentions that according to Hesiod, Apollo and Cyrene had a son, Aristaeus.
31. For discussion of the Cyrene episode in the Catalogue, see West 1985 pp. 85-89.
Scholars who argue for Pindar's invention of the Thessalian nymph in Libya include
Duchemin 1967 p. 59; Kohnken 1985 pp. 102-3.
32. Cyrene's battle with the lion is captured visually on a limestone relief on the treasury
of the Cyreneans in Olympia which dates from the middle of the sixth century. Cf. Cosi
1987 pp. 132-33 who suggests that we interpret the iconography as well as the account in
Pythian 9 as a "mythical sanction of the Greek colonisation of African territories." He thinks
that Battus' confrontation with the lions is modelled on the more "ancient" tale of Cyrene:
"As in a heroic tale of foundation a fight is almost necessary, there was chosen the fight with
the lion which was well-adapted to Africa and already had an illustrious 'precedent.' Only
the weapons are changed: whilst the nymph Cyrene kills the beast with her bare hands or
with a lance, Battos chases it off with the power of his voice. The two opposite versions only
show two alternative solutions to the same mythical process." Farnell 1930 vol. 1 pp.
137-39 provides a reprint of the limestone relief of Cyrene and the lion, as well as a second
century c.E. relief on the temple of Aphrodite in Cyrene of the Goddess Libya crowning
Cyrene as she strangles a lion, and a coin from the Greco-Roman period showing Apollo
bearing Cyrene overseas in a chariot drawn by swans. Shapiro 1988 includes Cyrene in his
discussion of local personifications in Greek vase painting.
33. Pindar makes the connection between Battus and Cyrene and their respective battles
with lions even clearer by emphasizing the element of fear. In Pythian 5, Apollo takes care
that his oracles are not neutralized; he gives the lions fear (cp63oj 60-62). In Pythian 9,
Apollo remarks that Cyrene is equal to the task of fighting lions; her wits are not storm-
tossed by fear (<p63to 32).
34. Steph. Byz s.v. Kupqvrv rroXic; Ai3uq<;, OTTO Kupr)vr)<; TOU 'Yyewc;. r) Kupqq
rrriyr|<; eyxcopiou. Both Pindar and Herodotus mention the spring at the center of the city;
they call it the spring of Apollo. Find. Pyth. 4.294; Hdt. 4.158.3.
35. Callim. Ap. 88-90 and see Williams' commentary 1978 ad loc. Topographical
names are often formed with the suffix -qvq as are Peirene, Mycene, and Mytilene; and
Chamoux (1953 p. 126) argues that doublets of the type Kupa/Kupqvq are common. Other
examples include AE(3a/AE(3r|vr| in Thrace and Ii6a/Ii8r)vr| in Caria. It is not unusual to find
that these names derive from terms for geographical characteristics of the city, especially
from names of plant or animal life. Gyrene's name fits with this observation because in
Libyan, the word for asphodel, Gyrene's most famous product, is cyra. Therefore, the name
Cyrene, in Libyan, would appropriately signify the city of asphodel.
36. Woodbury 1972 pp. 561-62; Burton 1962 p. 41.
37. Famell 1930 vol. 2 p. 204; Kohnken 1985 p. 77. Gildersleeve 1890 p. 342 observes
that "the oracular god, who has been speaking in oracular phrase, winds up with an oracular
hexameter."
38. Hdt. 1.47:. oi5a &' tyco yappou T' api8|j6v <ai (jETpa GaXaoaqc;.
39. Myscellus of Rhype, we remember, asks Delphic Apollo if he will have children and
is told to found the colony of Croton: Diod. 8.17 (exc. Vat. p. 9); see also Fontenrose 1978
Q.21 and his chart on p. 29.
40. Fontenrose 1978 pp. 177-78.
41. Another correspondence between this poem and Pythian 5, and especially between
the two founders, is the idea of crossing the sea. Cf. umpnovriav used of Battus' voice at
Pyth. 5.59 and untp HOVTOU used here of Gyrene's journey.
42. Duchemin 1967 p. 76 explains that this line is an allusion to the colonists who have
come from Thera. Cf. also Kirkwood 1982 p. 226. He says this line "glances at the story,
told in Pyth. 4, of the foundation of Cyrene from Thera under the guidance of Apollo."
43. Hdt. 4.147; cf. Paus. 3.1.7-8; 7.2.2; Strab. 8.3.19.
44. Note also here Pindar's use of agricultural imagery (cpuTeu6ev) and sexual language
((jixQsvTEc;) in a colonial context.
45. It is not necessary to argue that there actually was a colonial oracle in the
Thera/Cyrene tradition that incorporated Pindar's Callista pun; nevertheless, this is the type
of pun characteristic of colonization literature, and Pindar and his audience would be aware
of its context and connotations.
46. Steph. Byz. s.v. Qdooc;; Oenomaeus of Gadera in Bus. Praep. Evang. vii 256b. For
detailed discussion of this oracle and its role in the colonial tradition of Thasos, see Graham
1978 pp, 75-80.
47. Parke and Wormell 1956 vol. 2 #230; vol. 1 p. 66.
48. Graham 1978 pp. 76-77 quotes Oenomaus' comments on the oracle, which include
the remark attributed to Archilochus that Thasos was formerly called Eeria; cf. Tarditi 1968
p. 246.
49. Cf. LSJ s.v. su&EieAov, II "open to the sun, sunny," and qEpioc;, II "misty, dimly
seen." See also Malkin 1987a p. 39.
50. Pelliccia 1989 p. 93 includes this passage in his discussion of the syntax of aetiolo-
gies but fails to notice the "aetiological" pun.
51. Kohnken 1985 p. 94.
52. Marriage within this family, however, is not only hybrid but also violent, and in this
respect as well reflects the violence inherent in cross-cultural contact. Starting from the rape
of lo, this tendency is perhaps most strikingly characterized by the Danaids themselves, who
stab their husbands in their marriage beds and thus subvert the traditional shedding of blood
by the bride on her wedding night.
Conclusion: Interpreting the Metaphors
Metaphor is, at its simplest, a way of proceeding from the known to the
unknown. It is a way of cognition in which the identifying qualities of one thing
are transferred in an instantaneous, almost unconscious, flash of insight to some
other thing that is by remoteness or complexity, unknown to us.
(Robert A. Nisbet, Social Change and History)
When faced with the task of describing brave new worlds and their settlements in
them, the Greek colonists rely upon flashes of insight—metaphors; they use a com-
parable but familiar image, institution, or concept to approximate and appropriate
that which is new and indescribable. We, then, in our attempt to learn about the
archaic colonization movement can explore the tales the Greeks tell about founding
colonies in an effort to unpack their colonial metaphors. Purification for murder,
the solution to a riddle, marriage, and athletic victory all help the Greeks represent
aspects of leaving home and settling foreign territory; they are ways of proceeding
from the known to the unknown. Now is the time to ask if we can reconcile these
different conceptual models with each other. More important, what does each par-
ticular metaphor add to our overall understanding of how Greeks remembered colo-
nization?
Let us begin with the model of murder and purification. For a murderer to be
freed of pollution, he must go into exile for a year, and Delphic Apollo oversees this
punishment. A colonist, often driven from home by natural or political disaster,
also consults Delphic Apollo about founding a new city overseas. In fact, many
colonial traditions preserve the unlikely story that their founder was a murderer who
had to flee his homeland. At this point, the murderer's exile overlaps with the start
of a colonial expedition and thereby establishes a conceptual framework to describe
colonization. The Apollo who purifies becomes the Apollo who colonizes; the mur-
derer assumes the role of founder. Plato clarifies this connection between coloniza-
tion and a murderer's purification through exile by characterizing the impetus for
both in the same terms—as a process of division. Colonization thus operates as a
euphemism for purging the city of its undesirable elements.
This model of murder-pollution-purification addresses several different anxi-
eties within the colonial process. First, it modulates a city's unease about expelling
part of its population for the greater good of those who remain by describing it as
part of a religious system that first identifies a group as polluted and then, through
157
158 Conclusion: Interpreting the Metaphors
exile, transforms that group into a positive source of power. The emphasis is not on
the problem, the source of pollution, but on the solution, the source of power. The
account of Tlepolemus as both murderer and founder of Rhodes embedded within
Olympian 7 dramatizes the conceptual similarities between founding a colony and
being purified for murder. Both founder and murderer consult Delphic Apollo, and
each is sent from home to settle new territory. The religious power that the mur-
derer, once purified, wields is transferred to the new city as murderer becomes
founder. As part of his new role as founder, the murderer is celebrated as a civic
hero—buried in the agora, honored with annual games and sacrifices. As the para-
digmatic myth of an epinician ode, the account of murderer-turned-founder res-
onates further in praise of a victorious athlete. In Olympian 1, Pindar maps the
founder-as-murderer model onto his song for the young boxer victorious at
Olympia and suggests that Diagoras provides a source of power and fame to his
native land not unlike that of Tlepolemus. Murderer, founder, and athlete each
transgresses the customary boundaries of mortal behavior; as a result each brings
extraordinary power to his city.
In addition, this purificatory model addresses the warlike violence that was an
inevitable part of settling foreign territory. Thucydides tells us that a colonial expe-
dition was no different from a major military venture; a great display of force was
needed for both. The destructive force that must have been part of the initial act of
settlement is rarely mentioned in colonial myths or legends. Archeological and
historical evidence, however, show that hostile confrontations between Greek
colonists and native inhabitants must have taken place, and we can detect hints of a
level of discomfort with this violence as the motivation behind the purification
model for describing colonization. The violence of conquering native populations
is displaced onto the murder committed by the founder and thus is given, within the
colonial tale, a ritual format in which it can be expiated.
Delphic Apollo provides the Greeks with another colonial metaphor as well;
founding a colony is reenacted and represented through the act of solving a bilin-
gual, punning riddle. The Delphic oracle is famous for its ambiguous language, in
particular for riddles and puns, and the duality of a bilingual, etymological pun
allows the Greek colonists to reinterpret local phenomena in Greek terms. Pindar,
for example, includes in Pythian 1 a bilingual pun to explain the local name of a
river near Aetna, the city that Hieron founded. The indigenous name Amenes is
translated into Greek to mean "to remain always." The wordplay provides a Greek
interpretation of a foreign place-name, and the particular Greek translation under-
scores the enduring nature of the Greek rights to the land.
Bilingual colonial riddles provide the mechanism for a kind of cultural transla-
tion, or more accurately, a kind of cultural appropriation, and in this way, they rep-
resent the contact the Greek colonists had with local populations and the results of
that contact. Indigenous populations are another missing piece of the colonial puz-
zle, for although we know the Greeks came in contact with local peoples, they do
not record any such interaction explicitly in their foundation narratives. Bilingual
riddles, however, are linguistic proof of this cross-cultural contact, and they reflect
the terms upon which it was negotiated. The Greeks win the rights to the new land
by solving the puzzle that demands a Greek word for a local phenomenon. Colo-
Conclusion: Interpreting the Metaphors 159
nization is not limited to transplanting populations and building cities on foreign

land; it includes supplanting native speech as well. For language, that is, the lan-
guage of the colonist, is the sign of culture and civilization. Confrontation with for-
eign peoples who speak a different tongue demands strategies for dealing with such
linguistic and cultural conflict. One approach is to deny the native language's exis-
tence as language per se—the natives are wild and savage; they cannot communi-
cate at all. Another strategy is translation. The indigenous populations do not
speak an absolutely different language; it is merely a matter of translating their
words into those familiar to the colonists. This ostensibly innocent act of transla-
tion, however, represents a concomitant transfer of power. To give something a
name is to stake out one's ownership of it—it is a kind of colonization.
In addition to its representation of a linguistic imperialism, a colonial tale that
includes an enigmatic oracle mimics, on a linguistic level, the act of founding a
colony on foreign soil. Founding a Greek colony overseas requires the proper dis-
tribution of the key elements of Greek civic life in an unfamiliar setting. The
colonists divide up their new territory and establish the obligatory boundaries
between civic, sacred, and private space. The act of solving a riddle involves a sim-
ilar process—the recognition and distribution of the proper divisions between intel-
lectual categories. Thus the historical process, inherent in establishing a colony, of
imposing a sense of civic order on foreign land is reflected in the mental act of solv-
ing the riddle. Again, this particular colonial metaphor addresses the problem of
Greek confiscation of foreign land; it represses the military might of the colonists
and substitutes for it their intellectual prowess. In the end, colonial riddles highlight
the interpretive skills of the colonists; they celebrate a Greek solution to a foreign
puzzle, and for these reasons, they surface again and again in colonial discourse.
The purifying role and the ambiguous oracular language of Delphic Apollo pro-
vide the Greeks with two different conceptual models with which to tell the colonial
story. Although very different in nature, both metaphors reflect a similar way of
thinking about colonization. A murderer and a punning riddle are both by nature
ambiguous entities; each contains its own opposite, and precisely because neither is
static, each provides within itself the possibility for movement, transition, and trans-
formation. A murderer is a source of pollution and danger, but once purified, he
also brings power and advantage. A riddle is a puzzle that contains its own solu-
tion. Both the pollution that a murderer brings and an unsolved riddle represent a
state of chaos, a confusion of categories. What is needed in each case is an act of
interpretation or discrimination—to rediscover the proper boundaries between cate-
gories as a way to move from chaos to a state of order. In this respect, the
purification of a murderer through exile and the solution of a riddle both represent
that interpretive movement.
In an article on Sophocles' Oedipus the King, Jean-Pierre Vernant draws a simi-
lar connection between the ambiguity of oracular language and that of a polluted
murderer. Oedipus, Vernant suggests, is both.1 The model works on the principle
of inversion; it demands what Vernant calls an "ambiguous logic," and it is this
principle that governs Greek colonial discourse as well. A murderer and a riddle
include both the problem and the solution, and as narrative units they contain the
mechanism for moving from one to the other. Colonization is the product of social
crisis in archaic Greece, of famine, drought, overpopulation, or civil war. Yet this
very same institution, even as it effects a second displacement of peoples in the new
world, creates a new city and provokes the kind of polyvalent discourse that can
address and resolve the tensions and anxieties that overseas settlement produces.
In Pythian 9, Pindar exploits yet another metaphor of colonization—that of mar-
riage—which presents a very different model for conceptualizing Greco-indigenous
relations, an integrative one. In a mythological alternative to the Battus narrative of
Pythian 5, Pindar tells the story of the founding of Cyrene as the marriage of Apollo
and Cyrene. Their marriage describes overseas settlement as the harmonious union
of opposites—one people where once there were two—yet this union is achieved
only through an act of violence. Apollo forcibly takes the wild and savage huntress
from her home and establishes her as the fruitful mistress of a new city in Libya,
named for her. Their marriage is a productive one; it creates both a son, destined to
be immortal, and a new city, blessed with fertile fields and rich flocks. Marriage, as
the Greeks conceive of it, means taming the female, converting the wild into some-
thing fruitful and productive, and this process can be violent; it means plowing
earth, plucking fruit, trampling flowers. In the same way, settling foreign land is an
act of violence, a military venture, but from this violence comes the fruitful product
of civilization, a new Greek city. While the metaphor of purification for murder rep-
resents colonization as the expulsion of a portion of the population from the mother
city for the good of those who remain, the metaphor of marriage describes the act of
settlement as an equally violent but ultimately civilizing process. Yet both
metaphors, murder and marriage, in spite of their different orientations, address an
underlying anxiety of colonization—the displacement of peoples, both at home and
abroad; in addition, both metaphors suggest that colonization is an act that requires
the spilling of blood.
Finally, Pindar suggests that founding a colony is similar to winning an athletic
victory. In addition to using the metaphors of murder purification and marriage,
Pindar describes the deeds and rewards of athlete and founder in comparable terms.
This becomes especially clear in Pythian 5, where he constructs his song of praise
for Arcesilaus around the implicit similarities between the careers of oikist and Pan-
hellenic victor. Each runs risks and through his individual effort brings worldwide
fame to his native city; each receives the immortal fame of a hero cult. By evoking
tales of city founders, the epinician poet is able to link the victor with his native city
in never-ending praise, and Pindar's poetry, a civic celebration in itself, may
account to a large degree for the continued survival of many colonization traditions.
Our brief look at Hieron of Aetna's multimedia production has given us some idea
of how powerful choral poetry can be as a public forum for renegotiating and reen-
acting a city's civic origins. By incorporating colonial material into the social con-
text of the epinician genre, Pindar creates an occasion for the composition and
performance of foundation tales.
While this kind of approach—the identification and elaboration of a narrative
pattern and cultural metaphors within the colonial discourse of the Greeks—may
not produce a totalizing picture of the Greeks as they sent founding expeditions far
and wide, it does provide insight into how the memory of colonization functioned
within the Greek mentalite long after the cities themselves were founded. By
reconstructing a typology of the colonial narrative and exploring its variants, we can
see that colonization is "emplotted" not as the ambitious discovery of the new world
(as we might expect), but as a reluctant but necessary movement from a state of cri-
sis to its resolution. In addition, each of these colonial metaphors provides us with
a glimpse behind the narrative, a view of the anxieties and concerns that are neces-
sarily part of founding new Greek cities on foreign soil. In considering these
metaphors separately and in exploring how they work together, we see that certain
themes recur. Colonization was a violent act; it brought Greeks into contact with
foreign populations, and it was the province of Delphic Apollo. Apollo plays a key
role in the colonial drama—whether as purifying deity, enigmatic prophet, sponsor
of the Pythian games, or even as bridegroom, Delphic Apollo comes to represent, or
at least helps the Greeks to represent, the process of founding a colony overseas.
In addition to helping colonists understand the new world in terms of familiar
institutions and ways of thought, metaphor as narrative trope is itself emblematic of
the colonial experience. Metaphor, as Patricia Parker has pointed out, depends upon
"the notion of 'place'—of territory already staked out, of the tropological as insepa-
rable from the topological—and thus also of 'property' or of a place where a word
properly belongs."2 Aristotle, for example, explains that a metaphor is the applica-
tion of a strange (aXXoTpioc;) word transferred from one category to another (either
from the genus to the species or from the species to the genus, or from one species
to another) by analogy.3 Cicero and Quintilian also talk about metaphor in terms of
a foreign word (alienum verbum) displacing the native or proper (proprium) one,
and their definitions could just as easily apply to the kinds of colonial tales that
rename a local city in the Greek language.4 The local name of the city Gela, we
remember, is suitably replaced by a Greek verb of laughter (ysXaco), just as the
native populations are similarly displaced by the speakers of this foreign language.
The essence of metaphor, then, like that of colonization, negotiates a relationship
between the native and the foreign, a relationship that ultimately takes the power of
place from the former and deeds it to the latter.
Metaphor itself is thus figured as the foreigner or colonist usurping the name
and place previously occupied by the native or proper term: metaphor lives in "a
borrowed home."5 Quintilian justifies this verbal displacement by explaining that
"a metaphor ought to occupy an empty place or, if it does take over the place of
something else, it should be worth more than that which it expels."6 This descrip-
tion of metaphor calls to mind the strategies used by European and Greek colonists
alike to justify their alien presence in the new world. Either the colonial land was
formerly empty or its new occupants were worth more—they work harder, have a
better language, a better god—than those previously living there. Cicero similarly
acknowledges the violence or impropriety of metaphor when he suggests that if a
metaphor appears too harsh, it should be softened. "In fact the metaphor ought to
have an apologetic air, so as to appear to have entered a place that does not belong
to it with a proper introduction, not to have rushed in, and (to have come) by invita-
tion, not by force."7 Greek colonial tales similarly downplay the violence of colo-
nization and enlist rhetorical strategies that will soften the blow—the colonists were
invited to stay forever (day and night); their presence is merely a return or an act of
civilization as natural and as productive as ploughing a field.
Metaphor, one word colonizing another's space, helps the Greeks negotiate their
place in an alien environment—both in trying to understand the new world and in
staking out a place for themselves in that world. Thus, we can view the metaphori-
cal impulse as the first step toward recognizing the important similarities between
colonization and ethnography—two projects engaged in cultural translation. When
the Greeks settled Sicily, Libya, or the shores of the Black Sea, they encountered
alien landscapes, new peoples, foreign languages and cultures. In addition to the
necessary adjustment and transition inherent in learning how to live a different life
or, more important, in learning how to live a Greek life in a different place, an
important part of the colonial experience is the subsequent description of it. The
Greeks must translate the local phenomena and customs that define their new home
into the Greek language and idiom, and in constructing literary accounts of these
new civic foundations, they become ethnographers. They employ the language and
images that are part of their own Greek heritage in an effort to make sense (both to
themselves and to others) of what happens when they send military expeditions out
to conquer native peoples and settle their land. By translating experience into text,
the ethnographic project reenacts and ultimately reconfirms the colonial one. Long
after the colonization movement itself is over, the colonial tale, embedded in impor-
tant poetic genres and performed as part of significant civic occasions, enables the
Greeks to continue to colonize the past and to establish themselves as the imperial
power in that cultural memory.8
And we, too, are colonizers of the past, for our task—learning about ancient civ-
ilizations in general and about archaic Greek colonial discourse in particular—is not
so very different from that of the postcolonial Greeks. There is after all a close
affinity between the relationship of critic to text, colonizer to local peoples, anthro-
pologist to subject. In trying to comprehend and ultimately to describe or represent
a foreign culture, we are both engaged, critics and colonists alike, in the act of
interpretation.9 In "speaking for" the Greeks, in translating their experience into our
text, we must acknowledge what James Clifford calls the "partial truths" of our own
construction of the past. He suggests that as ethnographers, we need "to confront
and take responsibility for our systematic constructions of others and of ourselves
through others."10 In other words, we must realize that in moving from the known
to the unknown, we too use one set of cultural metaphors to interpret another.
Notes
1. Vernant 1988 p. 139.
2. Parker 1987 p. 36.
3. Arist. Poet. 1457b7.
4. Cic. De Oratore III.xxxviii.155: "Quod enim declarari vix verbo proprio potest, id
translate cum est dictum, illustrat id quod intellegi volumus eius rei quam alieno verbo
posuimus similitude." See also III.xxxix.159; xlii.167. Quintilian VIII.vi.5.
5. C. C. Dumarsais: "il est, pour ainsi dire, dans une demeure empruntee" (cited in
Parker 1987 p. 38).
6. Quint. VIII.vi. 18: "Metaphora enim aut vacantem occupare locum debet aut, si in
alienum venit, plus valere eo quod expellet."
7. Cic. De Oratore III.xli.165: "enim verecunda debet esse translatio, ut deducta esse in
alienum locum, non irruisse atque ut precario, non vi venisse videatur."
8. For discussions of the relationship between anthropology and colonialism, see Asad
1973; Lewis 1973; Firth et al. 1977.
9. See Redfleld 1985 for a discussion of Herodotus and the Greeks as ethnographers:
"His book is a contribution to the continuing cultural debate of the Greeks—and, implicitly, a
praise of the civilization which made that debate possible. Hitherto (to paraphrase Marx) the
peoples had only attempted to change the world; the Greeks, however, also found it neces-
sary to interpret it" (p. 118). Mohanty 1989, in an essay on cultural relativism and political
criticism, discusses these issues of "cultural translation" for the critic, anthropologist, and
colonist. Todorov 1984 pp. 14-33 characterizes Columbus, discoverer of the New World, as
an interpreter as well.
10. Clifford 1986b p. 121. On p. 10, he reminds us: '"Cultures' do not hold still for
their portraits. Attempts to make them do so always involve simplification and exclusion,
selection of a temporal focus, the construction of a particular self-other relationship, and the
imposition or negotiation of a power relationship."
Appendix
Pythian 5
165
166 Appendix
Pythian 5 167
168 Appendix
A O widely strong wealth, whenever a mortal man leads it—if fate grants
it to him—mixed with pure virtue, it is a companion with many friends.
O Arcesilaus, favored by the gods, you indeed from the deep starting
blocks of your glorious years strive for it [wealth] with good reputation
thanks to Castor with the gold chariot, who showers your blessed
hearth with fair weather after a wintry storm. (1-11)
Wise men, you know, bear even god-given power better, and much
prosperity surrounds you as you go with justice. And this is because,
on the one hand, you are a king. The inherited family power [eye] of
great cities holds this most awe-inspiring honor, mixed with your intel-
ligence. And you are blessed even now, because you have captured the
victory boast with the horses at Pytho and you have received this cele-
bration of men, (12-22)
a delight of Apollo. And so do not forget, as you are being hymned in
Cyrene, in the sweet garden of Aphrodite, to acknowledge the god as
chiefly responsible for everything. And cherish Carrhotus most of your
companions, who without bringing the daughter of late-minded
Epimetheus, Excuse, arrived at the houses of the sons of Battus who
rule by divine right. Rather, having been hosted by the springs of
Castalia, he crowned your hair with the honor of a victorious chariot
(23-31)
B when, with unspoiled reins he made it through twelve swift-footed
runnings. For he did not at all destroy the strength of the equipment, but
bringing the artifice of skilled craftsmen which hangs [in the temple],
he passed the hill of Crisa in the hollow valley of the god. And a
cypress beam holds it nearby a statue made from a single tree which the
arrow-bearing Cretans dedicated to the Parnassan temple. (32—42)
And so it is fitting that you meet your benefactor with a willing mind.
Alexibiades, the fair-haired Graces illuminate you. Blessed are you
Pythian 5 169
who have, after great toil, a memorial of strong words. For with forty
chariot drivers falling, having brought your chariot body back whole
with a undisturbed mind, you have already come to the plain of Libya,
your native city, from the glorious contests. (43-53)
But no one is, nor will ever be, without a portion of trouble. The
ancient prosperity of Battus follows, governing all equally, a tower of
the city and a shining beacon to strangers. That man even deep-roaring
lions fled from in terror when he brought forth for them his voice from
across the sea. Apollo Archegetes gave the beasts this terrible fear so
that his plans, through oracles, for the steward of Cyrene would not be
unfulfilled. (54-62)
C And he [Apollo] provides cures for heavy sicknesses for men and
women, he gave them the lyre, and he gives the Muse to whomever he
wants, leading good government without war into their breasts, and he
manages a prophetic oracle. At this oracle, he settled the strong off-
spring of Heracles and Aegimius at Sparta, Argos, and divine Pylos.
And it is my job to hail the beloved fame from Sparta, (63-73)
Being descended from this place [Sparta], the men, the Aegidae,
arrived at Thera, my forefathers, not without the gods, but some Fate
led them. From that time, receiving a banquet full of sacrifices, we
honor, Apollo Carneius, in your feast, the gloriously founded city of
Cyrene. Which [Cyrene] the strangers who delight in bronze, the Tro-
jan sons of Antenor, occupy; for they came with Helen when they saw
their homeland burning up in smoke (74—84)
in war. And the horse-driving race [Cyrene] receives them [Trojans]
kindly, men approaching them with sacrifices and bearing gifts, those
men whom Aristoteles brought in swift ships when he opened up a
deep path across the sea. And he founded greater altars for the gods
and established for Apollonian processions which protect mortals a
straightcut level [path] to be a paved road, resounding with the pound-
ing of horses' hooves, there, having died, he lies apart, at the edge of
the agora. (85-93)
D Blessed, on the one hand, he lived among men, and then he was a
hero honored by the people. Apart, before the houses, are the other
holy kings who have come upon their lot in Hades; they listen with an
earthy mind to the great virtues which have been sprinkled with soft
dew and to the songs beneath the streams, their prosperity and a com-
mon joy for their son and one justly due to Arcesilaus, who should call
upon Phoebus of the golden bow in a song of young men (94—104)
since he has from Pytho the recompense, beautiful in victory, of
expense, the pleasing song. Those who know praise that man; I will
say what is said. He nourishes a mind stronger than his age and a
tongue; in courage he is a wide-winged eagle among birds; in strength
170 Appendix
of contest, a bulwark. He flies among the Muses because of his dear

mother; he has the reputation of a skilled charioteer. (105-15)
You have dared [to make] as many approaches to native excellence as
there are; the benevolent god grants power to him now, and may you,
blessed sons of Cronus, grant that he has the same in the future both in
deeds and in plans—may no crop-withering wintry wind destroy his
time. The great mind of Zeus governs the prosperity of dear men. I
pray that he grant this honor at Olympia to the race of Battus. (116-24)
Olympian 7 171
Olympian 7
172 Appendix
Olympian 7 173
174 Appendix
A As if some one, taking a cup foaming within with the dew of the
grape from a wealthy hand, will bestow it as a gift, completely gold, the
peak of his possessions, from one house to another, offering a toast to
the young bridegroom, honoring the grace of the symposium and the
new family relationship. With friends present he has caused him to be
envied for his like-minded marriage. (1-6)
I, too, sending this liquid nectar, the gift of the Muses, to men bearing
prizes, victorious at Olympia and Pytho, ask the gods' blessing for the
sweet fruit of my mind. He is blessed whom good reports hold; Charis,
who gives life its bloom, watches over now one man and now another,
often with the sweet-sounding lyre and the all-sounding notes of pipes.
(7-12)
And now, with the accompaniment of both [lyre and pipes], I have
entered with Diagoras, hymning the girl of the ocean, the daughter of
Aphrodite and bride of Helius, Rhodes, in order that I may praise that
straight-fighting hulk of a man who was crowned beside the Alpheus in
compensation for boxing and beside the Castalian springs and [so that I
may praise] his father, Damegetus, who pleases Dike, dwelling by the
Argive spear upon the three-citied island near the headland of wide-
plained Asia. (13-19)
B I wish, announcing from the beginning, from Tlepolemus, to straighten
out the common account for the wide-strengthed race of Heracles. For
they boast to descend on their father's side from Zeus, and on their
mother's side, to be the sons of Amyntor through Astydameia. Innu-
merable errors hang upon the wits of men, and this is a difficult thing to
discover (20-25)
how now and also in the end a man will come upon what is best. For
he killed Licymnius, the bastard brother of Alcmene, striking him with
a scepter of hard olive wood at Tiryns, as he [Licymnius] was leaving
the rooms of Midea, he, the founder of this land here—having been
driven to anger. Disturbances of the mind drive even a wise man
astray. He went to consult the god. (26-31)
And the golden-haired one told him from his well-scented inner cham-
ber to sail from the Lernean cape straight to a land surrounded by sea,
where once the great king of the gods showered the city with golden
Olympian 7 175
snow when Athena, through the contrivances of Hephestus and a

bronze axe, rising from the top of her father's head, cried out a tremen-
dous shout. The heavens shuddered at her and so did mother Earth.
(32-38)
C At that time, the heavenly power that gives light to mortals, the son
of Hyperion, told his dear children to guard for themselves her future
service. [He said that] they should be the first to found a conspicuous
altar for the goddess, and making a holy sacrifice, they should cheer the
heart of the father and the maiden who wields the spear. Reverence for
forethought casts excellence and delights for mankind, (39-^44)
and yet a certain unpredicted cloud of forgetfulness comes later and
steals the right way of things from their minds. And so they went up
having no seed of shining flame, and they built an altar on the acropolis
with fireless sacrifices. Zeus bringing a golden cloud showered them
with much gold, and the Grey-eyed one gave them art, (45-50)
all of it, so they would rule all mortals with their hands which excel in
effort. Their paths bore works which were like living and crawling
creatures; their fame was deep, and wisdom is greater for the clever one
when it accomplishes things without deceit. The ancient reports of men
say that when Zeus and the immortals divided up the earth, Rhodes was
not yet visible in the marine expanse, but was hidden, an island, in the
salty depths. (51-57)
D Since Helius was absent, no one drew him a lot, and they left him
without a portion of land, a holy god. When he [Helius] mentioned it,
Zeus was going to arrange a recasting of votes for him, but Helius
would not allow it since he told him that he himself had seen in the
hoary sea earth growing from the ground, rich in food for men and
kindly to their flocks. (58-63)
He bid Lachesis with the golden fillet at once to stretch out her hands
and not to foreswear the great oath of the gods, but to nod her head
with the son of Cronus so that once [the island] had been sent forth into
the shining air, it would be his prize from this time on. And in the end,
the peaks of his words fly with truth. There burst forth from the moist
sea (64-69)
an island, and the father, source of the sun's sharp rays and ruler of the
fire-breathing horses has her. There, having been mingled with Rhodes
at that time he begat seven sons who inherited the wisest thoughts of
men in earlier times. One of whom sired Camirus, lalysus, the eldest,
and Lindus. Having divided the paternal land into thirds they ruled
apart, and their seats are named for themselves. (70-76)
E Here, the sweet recompense for bitter sorrow was established for Tle-
polemus of Tiryns, the founder, just as if for a god—a procession filled
176 Appendix
with the smoke of sacrificed sheep and athletic contests. Diagoras was
crowned twice with blossoms from these games, and he fared well four
times at the glorious Isthmian games and time after time at Nemea and
at rocky Athens. (77-82)
The bronze knew him at Argos, and his deeds at Arcadia and Thebes
and the lawful contests of Boeotia and Pellana; six times he was victo-
rious in Aegina. In Megara the stone tablet has no other record. But O
father Zeus, ruling over the peaks of Ataburius, honor the celebration of
song due to the Olympian victory (83-88)
and a man who discovered excellence in boxing. Give him respectful
grace from citizens and strangers since he has steered straight the road
hateful of excess, knowing clearly the things which the straight minds
of his good fathers prophesied. Do not hide the common seed of Cal-
lianax. The city too enjoys the celebrations with the graces of the sons
of Eratus. In a single allotment of time, different breezes blow differ-
ent ways. (89-95)
Bacchylides 11 111
Bacchylides 11
178 Appendix
Bacchylides 11 179
Sweet giving Victory,... to you alone the father... high throned, in

much-gilded Olympus, standing beside Zeus, you judge the fulfillment of
excellence for immortals and mortals. Come, daughter of deep-haired,
straight-judging Styx. Thanks to you even now processions of well-
180 Appendix
limbed boys and feasts hold Metapontum, a city honored by the gods,
and they sing of the Pythian victor, the lovely son of Phaescus. (1-12)
With kindly brow the Delian-born son of Leto with the deep girdle
received him, and many blossoming crowns of powerful, all-victorious
wrestling fell around Alexidamus on the plain of Cirra. Nor did the sun
see him fall to the ground on that day. I will say that in the very divine
plains of holy Pelops, too, beside the beautifully flowing Alpheus, had
not someone turned aside the path of straight decision, his hair crowned
with the very hospitable, grey olive wreath, (13-28)
he would have arrived to his cattle-nourishing, Italian fatherland . . . he
pinned the boy with much skill toward the earth in the land of beautiful
dance. But either the god was responsible or the much wandering judg-
ments of men, took the highest honor from his hands. But now wild
Artemis with golden staff and famous for her bow, the Gentle one, gave
shiny victory. For whom [Artemis] the son of Abas once built an altar
where many pray and his well-robed daughters (29-42)
whom all-powerful Hera struck with fear [and drove] out of the lovely
halls of Proetus, she whipped their wits astray yoking them to strong
necessity. For still virgins they had gone to the precinct of the purple-
girdled goddess and said that their father was much more wealthy than
the fair-haired consort of solemn, wide-strengthed Zeus. Angry with
them, she knocked their wits backwards in their breasts, and they fled
to the leafy mountain shrieking a terrible sound. (43-56)
Having left the city of Tiryns and the god-built streets, for it was ten
years since the bronze-armed demigods, who do not fear the battle cry,
had left lovely Argos and dwelled there [Tiryns] with the much-envied
king. For turbulent strife had arisen from harsh beginnings among the
brothers Proetus and Acrisius, and they were destroying the people with
grievous and unmeasured fighting; they [the people] begged the sons of
Abas to draw lots for the land, rich in barley, (58-69)
and that the younger brother settle Tiryns before [Argos] fell into harsh
necessity. And Zeus, son of Cronus, honoring the race of Danaus and
horse-driving Lynceus, was willing to put a stop to the grievous trou-
bles. The monstrous Cyclopes came and toiled over the most beautiful
wall for the famous city, where the god-like ones dwelled, the very
famous heroes, after they left famous horse-driving Argos. Rushing off
from there [Tiryns] the dark-haired, untamed daughters of Proetus fled.
(70-84)
Grief took his heart and alien care stung him; he considered driving a
two-edged sword into his breast, but his spear-carrying bodyguards
checked him with honeyed words and strength of hands. For the com-
pletion of thirteen months they wandered the dark woods and fled
through flock-nourishing Arcadia. But when their father reached the
Bacchylides 11 181
beautiful-flowing Lousus, bathing there, he called upon the ox-eyed

daughter of purple-crowned Leto, (85-98)
stretching his hands to the rays of the charioteer sun, [praying] that this
daughters be led out from this terrible madness. "I will sacrifice to you
twenty unyoked, tawny-hided oxen." She heard him praying, the one
with the best father, she who hunts beasts, and persuading Hera she put
an end to the godless madness for the crowned girls. And they at once
built her an altar and a precinct, and moistened it with the blood of
sheep and established the dances of women. (99-112)
From there you too followed the Achaean warrior men to the horse-
raising city, and with good fortune you inhabit Metapontum, O golden
mistress of the people. There is a lovely grove for you here, beside the
well-watered Casa, founded by men who, with the will of the blessed
gods, in time sacked the well-built city of Priam with the bronze-
thoraxed Atreidae. Whoever has wits, he will discover, in all time, the
many deeds of the Achaeans. (113-26)
182 Appendix
Pythian 9
Pythian 9 183
184 Appendix
Pythian 9 185
A I wish, announcing with the deep-girdled Charites the bronze-

shielded Pythian victor, to hail Telesicrates, a prosperous man, the
crown of horse-driving Cyrene, whom the long-haired son of Leto once
took from the valleys of Pelion which echo in the wind, and he brought
the wild maiden in a golden chariot and made her mistress there and
caused her to live in the lovely flourishing third root of the many-
flocked and much-fruited land. (1-8)
And silver-footed Aphrodite received the Delion stranger, touching his
god-driven chariot with a light hand, and she cast lovely modesty upon
their sweet bed, fitting together a common marriage, mingled in by the
186 Appendix
god and the daughter of Hypseus of the wide strength, who was king at
that time of the insolent Lapiths, a second-generation hero, descended
from Ocean, whom the Naiad, Creousa, bore once in the glorious val-
leys of Pindus when she took delight in the bed of Peneus, (9-16)
the daughter of Earth. And he [Hypseus] raised his daughter Cyrene

with the beautiful arms. But she cared neither about the back-and-forth
ways of weaving nor did she like the delights of meals at home with her
friends. Rather, fighting with bronze spears and sword she slew wild
beasts, providing much pleasant peace for her father's cattle. And she
spent very little sleep, sweet companion of her bed [which creeps] upon
her eyelids towards dawn. (17-25)
B The broad-quivered one, far-darting Apollo, came upon her once

wrestling alone with a fierce lion, without weapons. At once he
[Apollo] called Chiron out of his halls with this speech, "Son of
Phillyris, leave behind your holy cave and marvel at the guts and great
power of this woman; [see] what kind of contest she wages with an
unflappable mind, the young girl has a heart greater than her task, and
her wits are not storm-tossed by fear. Which mortal gave birth to her?
Having been torn from what stock (26-33)
does she occupy the paths of the shadowing mountains and have a taste
of unlimited power? Is it permitted to lay a famous hand on her or to
cut down the honeyed flower from her bed?" And the inspired Centaur,
smiling greenly with a benevolent brow, answered his cunning skill
straight away, "Hidden are the keys of wise Peitho, [the keys] of holy
loves, Phoebus, for among both gods and men equally they hesitate [to
do] this—to come upon the sweet bridal bed for the first time openly.
(34-41)
And for you, for whom it is not allowed to touch a falsehood, a gentle
disposition has turned you aside to utter this speech insincerely. You
ask about the family of this girl, O lord? You who know the proper end
of all things and all ways? As many spring leaves as the ground sends
up, and as many sands in the sea and in rivers as are disturbed by waves
and gusts of wind, and what will happen, and whence it will be, you
know well. But if I must compete with you in wisdom, (42-50)
C I will speak. You have come, as a bridegroom to this girl in this

glen, and you will bear her across the sea to a choice garden of Zeus
and there you will make her foundress, having gathered a host of island
people to a hill surrounded by a plain. And now wide-meadowed, rev-
erend Libya will receive the famous nymph kindly in her golden halls,
where at once she will make her a present of a portion of land to be
lawfully hers, land which is neither lacking in plants of all fruits nor
unfamiliar to beasts. (51-58)
Pythian 9 187
There she [Cyrene] will bear a child whom famous Hermes, taking it up
from his dear mother, will carry to the Horae and Gaea. They, admir-
ing the baby upon their laps, will drip nectar and ambrosia upon his lips
and they will make him immortal, Zeus and holy Apollo, a charm to
dear men, ever-present protector of flocks, Agreus and Nomius, and by
others [they will arrange] to call him Aristaeus." And so he spoke and
urged [Apollo] to accomplish the pleasant goal of marriage. (59-66)
Swift is the deed of gods in a hurry and short are the paths: that very
day accomplished these things. He mingled with her in the very gold
bed chamber of Libya, where she [Cyrene] is guardian of a most beauti-
ful city and one famous in contests. Even now at Pytho, the son of
Carneiades commingled her with beautifully blossoming luck. Victori-
ous there, he made Cyrene known, and she will receive him benevo-
lently as he brings desired fame from Delphi to his fatherland full of
beautiful women. (67-75)
D Great virtues always require much song, but elaborating just a few
things among many provides a listening for the wise; the right amount
equally holds the peak of everything. Seven-gated Thebes once knew
that even lolaus did not dishonor him [Telesicrates], lolaus, whom
when he took off the head of Eurystheus with the edge of his sword,
they buried beneath the earth in the tomb of Amphitryon, the chario-
teer, where his forefather, the guest of the Sown Men lies, having reset-
tled in the white-horsed streets of Thebes. (76-83)
Having mingled with him [Amphitryon] and Zeus, proud Alcmene bore
in a single childbirth the strength, strong in battle, of twin sons. Dumb
is the man who does not wrap his mouth around [the praise] of Heracles
or who does not make mention of the Dircaean springs which nourished
him and Iphicles. For them I will sing praise, in accordance with my
vow, whenever I suffer something good. May the pure light of the
melodious Charites not leave me, for I say that you have glorified this
city [Cyrene] at Aegina and three times at the hill of Nisus, (84-91)
having escaped silent uselessness through your deed. For this reason,
either a friendly citizen or an enemy, let him not hide that which has
been worked on well in common, violating the word of the old man of
the sea—that man said to praise even your enemy when he does well
with all your heart and with justice. Many times they saw you victori-
ous also in the seasonal games of Pallas, speechless, each of the young
maidens prayed that you would be their dear husband or [the mothers
prayed for you to be] their son, O Telesicrates, (92-100)
E at the Olympian games at the contest of deep-bosomed Gaea and at
all the local games. And I must quench the thirst for songs, to awaken
once more the ancient reputation of his ancestors. Such men went to
the city of Irasa on account of a Libyan woman, suitors for the glorious,
beautiful-haired daughter of Antaeus whom many of the best local men
188 Appendix
asked [to marry] and many foreigners as well. Once her appearance
(101-8)
became spectacular, they wanted to pluck the blossoming fruit of her
golden-crowned youth. Her father produced a rather famous marriage
for his daughter; he had heard once how Danaus in Argos had discov-
ered how to get the swiftest marriage for forty-eight maidens before
noon. For he had stood the whole group at the goals of the contest. He
bid the heroes, as many as had come to be sons-in-law, to decide by
foot contests which daughter they would have. (109-16)
In this way the Libyan gave a bridegroom, fitting him, to his daughter.
He placed her at the mark, arraying her [in beauty] to be the final goal,
and he said to the middle to lead her away [as bride] whoever could
first, running, touch her robes. There, Alexidamus since he escaped the
swift race, took the pledged girl by the hand and led her through the
crowd of Nomad horsemen. They threw many leaves upon them and
crowns, and he received many wings of earlier victories. (117-25)
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Index of Passages
Aelian Clement of Alexandria
Varia Historia scholia to Protrepticus
4.15: 85 2.11: 47
Aeschylus DiodorusSiculus
Aetnaeae (F6 Radt)
5.83.2-ji: 25
75: 88
8.17.1: 18,19,74
8.21.3: 49-50, 73
Antiphon
8.23.2: 55, 73
On the Murder ofHerodes
11.49: 85
82-83: 34
12.10.5: 48
First Tetralogy
1.11: 34
III.ll: 34 Dionysius of Halicarnassus
exc. xix 3.3: 53
Archilochus
Fr.l7T: 22 Heraclitus
Fr.lST: 22 DK22B53: 54
Aristophanes
Herodotus
Birds
4-155: 106
917_19: 84 4-155: 106 23
5.42.2: 19
995-96: 23
6.38.1: 25
Aristotle
Poetics Hesiod
22.5: 48 Catalogue of Women
Fr. 92 M-W: 146-47
Athenaeus
4.167d^: 23 Hesychius
FGr//390F1.3: 50-51
Bacchyhdes
Odell
64-72: 130-31 Homer
lliad
95-103: 132
113-17: 133 2.661^9: 123
Odyssey
Callimachus 6.7-10: 23
Hymn to Apollo 9.116-24: 21
55-57: 32 Homeric Hymn to Demeler
71-73: 113 1-5: 141
201
202 Index, of Passages
Livy 5.55-57: 107

1.9-13: 67-68 5.57-61: 104-5
5.63-72: 114-15
5.72-81: 113
Menander
5.82-88: 115
Perikeiromene
5.89-93: 23
1013-14: 63-64
5.89-95: 110-11
5.93-95: 24-25
Pausanias 5.94-95: 103
3.1.8: 25 5.96-103: 112
5.7.3: 68 5.103-7: 110
6.9.8: 127 5.116-124: 116
9.29.1: 66 9.1^: 140
9.5-8: 140-41
9.12-13: 138
Pherecydes
9.13-17: 142
FG.//3F102: 45 ^. ™
9.18-23: 142
9.26-28: 143
Pindar 9.36-37: 143
Isthmian 9.39-39a: 144
6.19-21: 111-12 9.43^4: 148
8.1-4: 126 9.44-49: 148
8.16-23: 66 9.51-54: 136
Nemean 9.51-55: 149
3.76-9: 111 9.55-56a: 138
7.12-16: 109 9.55-61: 144-45
Olympian 9.68-72: 149
7.13-19: 121-22 9.73-75: 138
7.20-24: 122-23 9.97-100: 139
7.27-33: 123-24 9.109-112: 143
7.55-57: 70 9.117-18: 138
7.62-64: 70 9.121-23: 138
7.69-70: 70 9.123-24: 139
7.71-74: 72 Fr. 105a: 83
7.77-79: 120 Fr. lOSaandb: 97
7.77-80: 125
7.93-94: 122
Pythian Plato
1.29-33: 93-94,96 Apology
1.33-35: 93 21b: 45
1.62-65: 94 Hippias Maior
1.67-68: 95 285d: 15
4.1-8: 108 Laws
4.59-63: 106-7 735e-736a: 37
4.254-57: 63 740e: 16
4.256-59: 150 776a-b: 61
5.12-19: 105-6 865d-e: 33
5.20-25: 107 Sophist
5.43-49: 109 226d: 36
Index of Passages 203
Plutarch Simonides
De Fortuna Romanorum Fr. 552 PMG: 91-92
8.321 a-b: 3
Moralia Strabo
140e-f: 62 7.7.8: 31
294 e-f: 49 14.1.4: 40-41
407f: 19-20
772e-773b: 31 Thucydides
2.102.5-6: 49
Sappho 5.11.1: 26
Fr. 105aL-P: 65 6.3.2: 32
Fr. 105cL-P: 65 6.23: 40
Fr. 114L-P: 64
Subject Index
Acarnania 24, 38, 49, 124 Archilochus 22-23, 41

Acragas24 Arethusa 68-69, 146
Acrisius 129, 131 Argilus in Thrace 20
adunaton 50, 56, 73 Argos 38, 104, 114-15, 120, 122, 125, 129,
Aegae in Macedonia 24, 47^8 131, 137, 151 -52
Aegina 66, 69, 116 Argos Oresticum 18, 31
Aeolus 18 Aristaeus 137, 145, 147
Aeschylus 9, 26, 45, 75-76, 85, 88-94 Aristophanes 23-24, 84
Aethiops of Corinth 23, 84 Aristotle 48, 161
Aethra 53 Artemis 129-30, 132-33, 142-43
Aetna 9, 75-76, 83-102, 116, 158, 160 Artimedes 40, 55
Aetolus 18 Ascra 66
agriculture 21, 63-65, 69-70, 72-75,141, Asopus 68-69
143-44,161 Athamas53
Alcmaeon 24, 38, 49, 124 Athena 39, 92, 120-21, 125, 127
Alexidamus 129-30, 132 Athenaeus 23
Alpheus 68-69, 146 Athens 17, 25, 35, 38, 90, 92, 127
Alsop, George 72 athletic victor 9-10, 88, 93, 95-96, 103-20,
American colonization 3-4, 69, 72 125-28, 132-33, 136, 138, 140, 151,
Amphipolis 26 158
Anaxandrides 18 athletic victory 10, 88, 95, 97, 107, 117, 121,
animal guides 20, 53 132, 137, 140, 149, 151-52, 157, 160
Antaeus 137-38, 143-44, 151 athletics 5, 9, 25, 85, 87-88, 93, 97, 106,
Antimnestus 55 109, 111, 120-21, 125, 127-29,
Antiphemus 47 132-33, 137, 139, 151, 158
Aphrodite 70, 121-22, 137-38, 142, 144 Attridge, Derek 46
Apis 18 Australian colonization 7, 10 n.2, 29 n.37
Apollo 4-5, 8, 10, 18, 20, 24, 27, 32-5,
38-41, 46, 48-50, 53-56, 62, 68, 74, Bacchylides 85, 130-33
93, 104-6, 108-10, 115, 124-26, Battus 17-18, 20, 23-25, 48, 85, 104-6,
137-60 108, 110-12, 115-16, 125, 147, 160
Apollo Archagetes 24, 104—5 Boeotia 53
Apollo Carneius 104, 112-16 Bohringer, Francois 127-28
Apollodorus 18 Brasidas 25
Apollonius of Rhodes 38 Burkert, Walter 114
Arcesilaus 95, 104-7, 109-10, 112-13, 116, Burnett, Anne 96, 131
136 Burton, R.W.B. 93
Archias 5, 23, 31-32, 38, 68, 124 Byzantium 50
205
206 Subject Index
Calarae, Claude 96 Cyrene

Callimachus 20, 23, 32-33, 113 city 5, 16-17, 20, 22-24, 32, 35-37, 48,
Callipolis 53 52, 85, 95, 103-20, 131, 136-56, 160
Callista 17, 150 nymph 5, 69, 136-56, 160
Captain Cook 6, 44 n.38
Carrhotus 104, 109-10 Danaids 152
Carroll, Margaret 75-76 Danaus 137, 151
Carson, Anne 137, 140 Defradas, J. 124
Catullus 63 Delphi 8, 16-17, 25, 33, 38-39, 45-60, 73,
Chalcis 16-17, 55, 73, 90 83, 104, 108-11, 126, 136-38, 140,
Chantraine, Pierre 39 151
Chios 15 Delphic oracles 4-6, 8-9, 15-16, 18-21, 25,
Chiron 137-39, 144-45, 147-49 27, 32, 34, 38, 40-41, 45-60, 62,
choral poetry 10, 83-85, 88, 96, 160. See 67-68, 73-74, 83, 89, 104-6, 108,
also drama; epinician poetry. 110, 115, 125-27, 137, 146^8, 150,
Cicero 161 158-59
city founder. See oikist Demeter 64, 92
civic strife 8, 17, 31, 35, 37, 52, 55, 129-31, Diagoras 111, 120-28, 133, 158
160 Diodorus Siculus 24-25, 48-50, 55, 73-75,
civilization 4, 62-65, 72, 74-76, 83, 93, 85, 88-89
128, 132, 140-42, 144, 146, 159, Dionysius of Halicarnassus 40, 53
160 Dolonci25
Cleomedes of Astypaleia 127 Dorians 104, 113-16
Cleomenes 17-19 Dorieus 17-19
Clifford, James 162 Douglas, Mary 6, 35-36, 39-40
Codrus 17 Draco 33
coinage 70, 85-88, 154 n. 32 drama 9-10, 15, 25, 83-84, 90-91, 96
Colophon 40-41 drought 16-17, 31, 35, 37, 52
Columbus 46 Dunbabin, T.J. 41
compensation 108-10, 120, 125-26, Dutoit, E. 50
132
Corcyra52 Egypt 152
Corinth 4-5, 23, 32, 38, 52, 68-69, 146 Ephesus 20, 53
Coroebus 38 Epimenides of Crete 35
Couretes 18 epinician poetry 9-10, 15, 25, 83-84, 95-97,
Crete 20, 39 103, 108, 111, 116, 120, 122, 125-29,
crisis 6, 8-9, 15-18, 24-25, 31, 45, 52, 62, 133, 136, 140, 151-52, 158, 160
73, 127-28, 146, 160. See also crop Eretria 52
failure; drought ethnography 162
crop failure 16, 73 etymology 46-47, 88-91, 95, 97, 106, 147,
Croton 18-19, 74, 145-46 151,158
cult 9-10, 24, 89-90, 96, 111-15, 136, Euripides 38
160 exile 17, 27, 31-40, 53, 55, 65, 73, 114,
athlete's 127-28, 132 122, 124-25, 131, 146, 157, 159
founder's 8, 15, 24-27, 85, 97-98, 103,
110, 112, 115-16, 125-26, 132, 158, Fontenrose, Joseph 127
160 Franklin, Wayne 7
Cushman, Robert 3-4
Cyclopes 21, 39, 69, 129 Geertz, Clifford 6
Cylon 35 Gela 24, 47^18, 161
Subject Index 207
Gernet, Louis 20 Livy 67

Golden Age 4, 21-22, 63, 74 Locri 41
Guiraud, Pierre 47 Locrus 49
Hades 65, 85, 92, 141 Macrobius 88-89

Hagnon 25 Malkin, Irad 33
Hamaxitus in Troad 20 marriage 5, 9-10, 27, 61-80, 83, 90,
Hamnett, Ian 46 120-22, 136-56, 160-61
Hawkes, Terence 91 Masson, Olivier 39
hearthfire 20-21,61 Medon 17
Hegesinus 66 Megara 38, 50
Helius 70, 72, 120-22, 146 Menecles of Barca 17, 35
Hephaestus 89-90, 92 metaphor 5-10, 24-25, 27, 33, 37, 40-41,
Hera 129-30, 132 45, 48-50, 54, 61-63, 65, 67, 69,
Heracles 38, 90, 104, 115, 121, 123-24 73-74, 83, 97, 120, 133, 140, 144,
Heraclitus 54 146, 148, 152, 153 n.16, 157-63
Herodotus 15-16, 18-19, 25, 35, 92, 105-7, Metapontum 5, 18, 129, 133
113,144 Methone52
Hesiod 21, 39, 51, 94, 139, 146-47, Miltiades 25
150-51 mother city 20-21,25,45,61, 111, 113,
Hieron 9, 75, 83-103, 116, 158, 160 133, 160
Himera 17 murder 8, 17, 26-27, 31^4, 55, 62, 65, 83,
Hippias 15 114, 120, 122, 124-28, 132-33, 136,
Homer 5, 15,21-23,32,38,51,65,69,75, 146,157-58, 160
123-24, 141 Myscellus of Rhype 18-19, 74, 146
Hughes, Robert 7
Nagy, Gregory 126-27
Ilium 20 narrative 4-8, 15-16, 146, 160-62
Ilus20 colonial 6, 8-10, 15-30, 31-32, 38,
indigenous populations 9, 27, 32, 40-41, 52, 45, 61, 66, 83, 89-91, 124, 146,
62, 65, 67-69, 76, 89-90, 158-61 160-62
violence against 40-41, 68, 76, 144-45, Nausithous 23
158 Naxos 24
interpretation 9, 20, 25, 45-60, 83, 157-63 Neleus 17
Ion of Chios 66 Nestor 129
Ionia 17 New World 3-4, 7, 67, 69, 91, 161
Nicias 40
Kahn, Charles 54 Nisbet, Robert A. 157
Kolodny, Annette 69 noncolonial foundation 65-67, 146
kudos 9, 96-97, 128 Norwood, G. 70
Lacius47 Oedipus 39, 51, 159

Las Casas, Bartolome de 46-47 Oeoclus 66
Lemnos 38, 63 oikist 8-9, 18, 20, 22-25, 31, 36, 38, 40-41,
Leontini 90 48, 53, 56, 74, 83, 87-88, 93, 95-98,
Leucippus 53, 129 103-23, 125-29, 132-33, 136, 151,
Libya 17-18, 22, 106, 137-39, 141, 144-^45, 157-58, 160
147, 149, 152, 160, 162 Orestes 16, 18, 31, 38
Licymnius 121, 123-24, 126 Ortygia 68-69
Lipara 18 Ozolian Locrians 49
208 Subject Index
Palici 88-91, 94-95 Sabine Women 67-68

Parker, Patricia 161 Sahlins, Marshall 6-7, 16
Paros 22,41,150-51 Sappho 64, 72
Partheniae 17, 35, 49, 73-74 Scythia 97-98
Patroclus 38 Servius 75
Pausanias 25, 38-39, 66, 69, 113-14, 127 Sicels 32, 38, 89-90
Peleus 38 Sicily 18, 23-24, 40, 68-69, 75, 88, 90,
performance 9-10, 83, 91, 96, 160 92-94, 162
Persephone 64-65, 85, 92, 141 Simonides 85, 88, 91-92
Phaeacia 23, 85 Siris 22
Phalanthus 20, 49, 53, 73, 85 Smith, John 69
Phocaea 35 Socrates 45-46
Pindar 9-10, 23-26, 66, 69-70, 72, 83, Sogenes 139
85-86, 93-98, 103-16, 120-29, Sophocles 51-52
132-33, 136-40, 142-44, 146-47, Sparta 15-19, 25, 35, 52, 73, 96, 104,
149-51,158,160 114-15,150
Plato 15-16, 21-22, 33-37,45, 61,76, 131, Strabo 16, 18,31,40-41,55
157 Syracuse 4-5, 9, 17, 22-23, 31-32, 38, 41,
Plutarch 3, 5, 19-20, 31-32, 38, 49, 62, 64, 68-69, 75, 84, 90-91, 96, 124, 146
68
Podalirus 50 Tarentum 17, 35, 37, 49-50, 52, 73-74,
pollution 31-44, 114, 124, 126, 133, 157-58 85
Polynesia 6-7, 44 n.38 Taylor, Archer 48
Poseidon 66, 92, 152 Teiresias 39
Proetus 129-32 Telesicrates 95, 111, 136-56
puns 8-10, 20, 26, 45-48, 56, 90, 95, Tempe 39
149-51,158-59 Tenedos 25
bilingual 47-^8, 51, 54, 56, 70, 88, Tennes 25
89-90, 94-95, 106, 136, 147, 158. See Thalia 75, 85, 89-90, 92
also etymology Thasos 22, 150-51
purification 5, 8, 10, 26-27, 31-45, 54-56, Thebes 39, 66, 69, 111, 113, 116, 137
69, 113-14, 116, 120, 124-26, 128, Theoclymenus 38
131-33, 157-61 Thera 16, 22, 24-25, 32, 35-36, 48, 104,
PylosS, 41, 104, 114-15, 129 113, 149-50
Theras 17, 24-25, 150
Quintilian 161 Thrace 20, 22, 25, 41, 52
Thucles 24
rape 61-62, 64-69, 75-76, 85-86, 88-89, Thucydides 5, 24-26, 32, 38, 40-41, 47, 49,
92, 120,141, 144-46, 149 52, 158
Rhegium 16, 24, 40, 73 Thurii 48
Rhodes Tiryns 17, 129-30
city 25, 38, 111, 116, 120-28, 132-33, Tlepolemus 25, 38, 111, 116, 120-28, 132,
136, 146, 158 136, 146, 158
nymph 69, 70, 72, 120-22, 146 Tripodisci 38
riddles 8-9, 20, 26-27, 45-46, 48, 50-52, Trojan War 114-16, 129, 133
54-56, 69, 83, 148, 150, 157-59, Turner, Victor 6
161 Typhon 93-94
neck riddles 51-52
rite of passage 36, 64, 142, 154 n.24 ver sacrum 20, 43 n.26
Romulus 67 Vernant, J.-P. 54, 63, 74, 159-60
Subject Index 209
violence 8-9, 40, 61-62, 64-65, 68, 75, 90, White, Hayden 5-7, 15-16
114,116, 128, 133, 142-44, 146, 156 Woodbury, Leonard 147
n.52, 158-61
Zancle 17, 55
wedding poetry 63-65, 72-73, 143 Zeus 66, 75, 86-87, 89-90, 92-96, 104,
Welsh, Andrew 52 116, 121, 123, 129, 136, 149, 152

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The Poetics of Colonization

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New York Oxford

Oxford New York Toror o

Copyright © 1993 by Carol Dougherty

Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wellesley, Massachusetts C.D.

Introduction: The Poetics of Colonization, 3

Part I. Narratives and Metaphors: Translating the City into Text

Part II. Texts in Context: Staging the City

Conclusion: Interpreting the Metaphors, 157

AJP American Journal of Philology

LSJ Greek-English Lexicon, ed. H. G. Liddell, R. Scott, and H. S.

contrast to the straitened and cramped circumstances of England. Implicit is the

novel or a play."11 Thus, as we will see, the Greeks represent colonization as a

Particularly in colonial settings, where the replication of old forms is a controlling

1. The essay is quoted in full in Cushman 1855 pp. 31-38.

Overpopulation, or too many people competing for a limited source of livelihood, is

Myscellus, short-in-the-back, Apollo the far-darter loves you and will

He asked the Spartiates for people and led them on a colonial

Plutarch subsequently names several expedition leaders—among them Battus and

There is an overgrown island that spreads, away from the harbor,

Resolution and Context: The Cult of the Founder

Since he died, the people of the Chersonese sacrifice to him as is

The colonial narrative opens at a moment of civic crisis—drought, plague, or civil

This elaborate colonial account contains many intriguing narrative details—unre-

Traditionally in Greek literature, as Phoebus, Apollo purifies men; he cleanses their

depends on division. As a result, she warns us that "any piecemeal interpretation of

Str.: Every such discrimination, as I know it, is called by all a kind of

Archilochus, as we remember, recalls the hostility between Greeks and Thracians as

1. The god mentioned in this account is undoubtedly Delphic Apollo.

What does the god say? And why is he riddling? (Apol. 21 b)

This illustrious man, renouncing the name established by custom, chose to be

Consider, noble Caranus, and place my words in your mind. Leaving

The essence of a riddle is this: to combine things which are impossibly

successful foundation as a reward for the correct interpretation of the following

The language of the Delphic oracle is characteristically enigmatic, and precisely

1. For collections of colonization oracles and discussions of their credibility as historical

48. Cf. Vidal-Naquet 1986 p. 214.

For Plutarch, the partnership exemplified in producing offspring should extend to

you for the cultivation (ploughing) of legitimate children" (TOUT^V yvr|oicov

Virginity, virginity, where have you gone, leaving me behind?

There burst forth from the moist sea an island . . . (69-70)

Myscellus, short-in-the-back, Apollo the far-darter loves you and will

21. Cf. Eur. Med. 230-51; Soph. Fr. 524 Nauck.

I have composed melic songs for your Cloudcuckooland, many and

nario we have seen at work in literary representations of colonial foundations. Rape

A. What name then will mortals give to them?

representation of Greek settlement overseas as Greek cultural domination over local

Playing with language, manipulating it to represent the past so as to make it useful

The descendants of Pamphylus and the Heracleidae, dwelling beneath

Zeus accomplisher, determine that there always be such a portion

Understand what I say to you, eponymous father of very divine holy

Epinician poetry is a publicly performed celebration of athletic victory. Whether

Pythian 5 celebrates the victory of Arcesilaus, king of Cyrene, in the chariot

The ancient prosperity of Battus follows, governing all equally, a tower

He [Arcesilaus] should call upon Phoebus of the golden bow in a song